CHAPTER VIII

HALLALI

So passed the rich pageantry of Gaveston’s second term, and once again

he was speeding through the sun-washed river-meadows towards the vast

smoky antre of Paddington. While the train curved grandly through

beautiful Maidenhead, he took out his pocket-book, a slim wallet of

polished eftskin which the Contadina da Chiesa had given him, with

her coronet set in sapphires in one corner, as an Eastertide gift. He

unfolded a letter on thick mauve notepaper.

_Villa des Grues,

Route des Rastaquouères,

Monico._

_Valentine’s Day._

_Gav dear,--I feel my health coming back to me. The doctor is

a Frenchman. Don’t you find beards rather attractive? Becky

Stein is in the next villa and we’ve been seeing such a lot

of your friend Belijah and the Dick-Worthies--you remember

them in the old days, don’t you, Wertheim they were then? Son

Altesse is also in residence. I love this place, except for the

pigeon-shooting. What a terrible radical you must think I am!_

_Love from your poor old_

_MOTHER_.

_Spi is a perfect companion and does so want to meet you, he

says. He’s so grateful to you, you know. Why not come and join

us. I saw the Princess de Levi-Malthusi in the Rooms. She was

in ermine and did you know she was dear Joey Rosenbaum’s first

wife? We have a lot in common. I forget when Cambridge breaks

up? Excuse blots, dear._

Gav folded up the letter meditatively. How familiar its Ambre perfume

was to him! All the dear memories of childhood were delicately

impregnated with its haunting scent, and from his snug first-class

carriage now thundering through Hayes he was borne on the magic drugget

of its subtle associations to Aix and Montreux and Harrogate and

Nauheim and--but scarce a spa of Western Europe that had not once been

his boytime’s playground.

But the vacation? A certain weariness crept over his usually flamboyant

imagination as he pondered its possibilities. The Riviera? No: he hated

all that chromatic monotony: the sky was blue and so was the sea,

and the trees were simply green. And then there was all that cruel

publicity of press photographers. Decidedly he must find some less

unvariegated _paesaggio_, a land with waters of chrysoprase and topaz

trees and, hanging dome-like over all, a firmament of purest jargoon.

And through the enchanted pathways of his mind flitted vividly a

processional of marvellous cities--Modane and Vallorbe and Hendaye,

Domodossola, Bobadilla the beautiful, which no traveller in fair Iberia

can leave unvisited, and Poggibonsi with its very name drenched in dear

romance.…

PADDINGTON! And the blue-and-gold Renault awaiting him.…

* * * * *

He passed a quiet evening in the Albany (Uncle Wilkie had slipped over

to Ostend for the spring races) and next morning found him out and

about in Jermyn Street, still undecided, but toying gracefully with a

beautiful idea.

“Do you know Calypso’s isle, Prospero’s principality?” he asked

the favoured hairdresser to whom he entrusted himself for daily

face-massage. “One lies there, you know, on banks of moly, and eats,

in lieu of the lotus, the ’khàsscheesh of blank oblivion and the snowy

powder of the χοχαινὴ.”

“Yes, m’sieur,” said the barber absently.

“Good,” said Gav. “My favourite emperor and my favourite novelist both

elected it as a dwelling-place.”

“I read much of Victor Hugo myself, sir,” said the barber, removing a

steaming towel.

“No, no. I meant Capri, not Herm.”

“Quite, m’sieur,” said the barber, applying another.

* * * * *

Pleased with the incident, Gav tipped the fellow with characteristic

_bravura_, and commenced his daily _emplettes_, as he did not hesitate

to call them. That morning saw him in all the most exclusive shops

in Town. Perfume he bought in Victoria Street and jewels in the busy

Strand; the choice of some new hats kept him for a while in Holborn,

but soon he was browsing among the bookshops of Villiers Street. At

Owen’s (lest he decide upon Afric adventures) he ordered tropical

silks, and (against his wooing the icy mountains of Greenland) he chose

marvellous furs at Moss Bros. Extenuate at long last with so much

purchasing, he refreshed himself with a light luncheon at one of his

clubs, the Times Book, and then taxied to his favourite Turkish Bath,

situated, like his barber, in Jermyn Street.

And here, in the equatorial mists of this sumptuous haunt, chance was

to decide for him where and how the vacation was to be spent.

For while reclining in the innermost _sudatorium_, as with a flash

of his scholarly and sophisticated wit, he called it, he began,

naturally enough, to fashion and recite aloud a poem inspired by his

extraordinary Oriental surroundings. Full of the mysterious fascination

of the immemorial East, the words fell true and rounded from his lips,

like far-off bells sounding in intricate cadence.

_“How honey-sweet thy waters, O Khara-kharoum, how long_

_And lingering my broken years_

_That drain this cup of exile tears_

_Far from thy cool delights, Khara-kharoum,_

_In Youmadong!”_

He paused at that plaintive drop in the rhythm of this first _ghazel_,

when suddenly a flute-like voice whispered through the steam.

“Omar reincarnate!” he heard in tones of passionate admiration.

Gav was silent.

“But let that voice resume,” said the delighted interruptor. And just

then the veiling vapour lifted a little, and Gaveston was able to

introduce himself to his hitherto invisible auditor.

“I’m Gaveston ffoulis, of Wallace.”

“And I,” said the other, “am Vivian Cosmo, St. Mary’s.”

Gaveston was thrilled.

“Is that the face that launched a thousand boats,” he quoted.

And the other made response with an answering thrill.

“And burnt the hopeless town of Ilium.”

It was an introduction, Gav felt, worthy of brother poets, and the

friendship thus romantically born of vapour and song was not slow to

mature. That same evening Lord Vivian Cosmo took him to dinner in the

George Augustus Sala room at Kettner’s.

“Here,” he said, “linger the last enchantments of the yellow ages.”

Gaveston relished to the full the fascination of the famous peer.

“Take an olive,” murmured Vivian, putting away his tiny gold-mounted

lip-salve, “and tell me how our Alma Mater is standing the ravages of

this twentieth century.”

Gaveston took one, and told him. He had by now gathered that his new

friend had already gone down some not inconsiderable time. Lord Vivian

hardly looked so youthful as he had in that uncertain vaporous light

underneath Jermyn Street, but still--the _bortsch_ was excellent, and

the skilful host had ordered a _cuve_ of champagne, _Veuve Amiot_ of

course.

“Leave your _langouste_,” he went on, “and describe your friends.”

Gaveston left it, and described them. The _escaloppes d’agneau_ gave

place to some _épitaphes d’andouilles_ which justified their name.

“Taste your _sorbet_,” said Vivian. They were on terms of Christian

names by now. “And give me your thoughts on women.”

Gaveston tasted it, and gave them. Seldom, he thought, had anyone found

him quite so interesting.

“Have another liqueur, Gavvy, and let me take you to Paris.”

Gavvy had it, and let him.

* * * * *

“We ought to have flown across,” said Lord Vivian a trifle petulantly,

as he closed the door of their state-room on the Calais packet.

“I like the Channel,” said Gaveston. “I should hardly believe I were

abroad unless I first had that faint emetic odour of engine oil on the

boat.”

“Delightful phantast!” laughed the peer. “But you’d be beautiful

beyond even my dreams, Gav, suspended in the air betwixt the two most

wonderful cities of the world. Not Gaveston, but Ganymede!”

The brilliant pair exchanged their fascinating _ripostes_ throughout

the journey. As soon as the white perfidious cliffs above Dover faded

from their sight, they naturally fell into the French tongue. Both of

course were perfect scholars in that languorous language: Vivian in

fact was a past master of idiom: and both preferred when in _la belle

France_ (as they wittily called it) to be taken for natives of that

vivacious and volatile country.

“_Est-ce que vous avez Français sang?_” asked Lord Vivian when he first

realized how remarkable his young friend’s accent was.

“_Qui sait?_” Gav had replied enigmatically.

And so, what with _esprit_ and _persiflage_, _conte_ and shrug, it did

not seem long ere the ambient vault of the Gare de Lyons had overarched

their arrival with its Rhadamanthine gloom.

* * * * *

And then followed a passionate sequence of sleepless nights and sleepy

days, while they visited all that there was of wicked and unvisited

in the _Ville Lumière_, from multitudinous Montmartre to the quaint

Quartier Latin, from Batignolles to Passy, from Nord to Sud. Where no

other English had ever dared to penetrate, Vivian and Gaveston were

often seen. The _Comédie Française_ and the _Folies Bergères_ grew

to know them well, and thence they would pass from _café_ to _café_

and _bouillon_ to _bouillon_, savouring a wild succession of the most

Parisian of _apéritifs_--Dubonnet and Byrrh, Maggi and Thermogene,

and in the very darkest of the _cabarets_ of Montparnasse “_les deux

Anglais_” became a familiar patchword.[15]

[15] A blot on Mr. Budd’s MS. here makes it doubtful whether

this should not read “watchword,” “catchword,” or even

“patchwork.” (LIT. EXEC.)

But so hectic a life could hardly last. Although they ate their meals

in the _chic_est restaurants, and their hotel was the largest and most

replete with _les conforts home_ in all the Gay City, Gaveston found

himself beset with _ennui_. He felt very surely that a chapter in his

life was drawing to a close; new interests would soon be clamorous for

treatment. Besides, what had originally enchanted him in his companion

now began to fray his nerves. It was distressing to find that Lord

Vivian’s only idea of conversation was to ask questions. At last he

felt driven to force a scene.

“_Dans la longue course_,” complained Gav one morning over their

_chocolat_, “_la luxure devient fatiguante_.”

Lord Vivian looked at him not without anxiety, and turned the talk on

to other lines.

“_Vous manquez vos âgés amis à Oxford?_” he asked.

“_Possiblement_,” Gaveston’s voice was cutting.

“_Quel est votre chef ami à Oxford?_”

“_Réellement, je ne connais pas._”

“_S’il vous plaît, dites à moi_,” Lord Vivian implored.

“_Vous me faites fatigué. Vous êtes trop curieux._”

The nobleman was touched to the quick.

“_Je pensais que vous me trouviez très plaisant_,” he said.

“_Non à tout_,” was Gaveston’s answer. He was horribly bored, and

could not restrain himself from telling his host so. “_Vous me forez

terriblement._” And so they parted.

But Gaveston soon recovered his mastery of English.

[Illustration: “NON À TOUT,” WAS GAVESTON’S ANSWER]

BOOK II

APEX

CHAPTER IX

ἘΚΛΟΓΟΣ

A fresh determination, a renewed conviction of his destiny, filled

Gaveston to overflowing when he returned to Oxford at April’s end. This

term, he decided, was to be a revelation. He would at last show Oxford

what Oxford really should be.

And that was not what was generally supposed, he thought, turning

over in his mind the various attitudes which existed. That of the

dons, for instance (except, perhaps, Mongo), and that of the miserable

exhibitioners and demies and postmasters in the less significant

colleges: they, poor bats and moles, thought of Oxford as a place of

learning!

“How provincial!” Gav laughed aloud. What did _they_ learn with their

concepts and their paradigms, their statutes and their algebra? He

knew that in a se’nnight he lived more than they in all their pitiful

existence. Three years of profitless study, one week of examination,

and fifty years of the Civil Service, or, equally pathetic, of the

mumbling, vegetable senescence of tutor or of don!

Was that Life?

Or the rowing men? What of them, denying themselves half the pleasures

of Youth and doubling their consumption of steak in their pettifogging

pursuit of that emptiest of honoraria, a blue? They were on a righter

track, to be sure, but what a motive! And what an unconsciousness!

“Is one young more than once?” Gav would often enquire in soliloquial

mood.

And the spring breezes, wandering over from the quickening woods and

copses of Wolvercote, heavy with the drowsy scents of hawthorn and

maids’-morrow and beggar-my-neighbour, would always answer “No!”

* * * * *

A break with the past, then, there must be. And Gaveston decided that

David would be the best confidant for his great discovery. True,

the old friends had lost touch with each other a little during the

feverishly brilliant passage of Gav’s last few months, but it was not

hard to pick up the unravelled skein of so close an affection.

Up the stone stairs of the turret staircase like a whirlwind, and Gav

burst tempestuously into David’s room. He was reading quietly by the

casement window.

“What’s the book, David?” he asked.

“Baudelaire, Gav,” said David solemnly.

“Oh, that’s all rot!” cried Gaveston with a peal of fresh springlike

laughter. And, seizing the exquisitely bound volume of the famous

French _symboliste_, he pitched it far out into the quad. The

affrighted rooks cawed and wheeled round it. “Just about fit for

them!” laughed Gav.

But poor David was puzzled.

“You gave it me yourself, Gavvy,” he said reproachfully.

“Ages and ages ago, David.”

“It was only----”

“Now listen, boy! That’s dead, that world. We’ve done with being

decadent and _fin de siècle_ and all that. Now we’re going to be

_commencement de siècle_. All that London can give, we have got. Paris

holds no secrets for us.”

He raised his hands in the attitude of a Corinthian statue of Apollo of

the best period as he went on, the spring in his voice, the morning sun

flaming on his hair.

“We must have done, David, with the fescennine dimness of artificial

things. We must be Pagan now, but Pagan in a new way--savage faun-like

creatures, lithe and blithe and primitive, we shall cease to be the

jaded votaries of the perverse and we shall hurl inexorably down our

grinning unbelieved-in idols!”

“Good,” interrupted David impulsively. “And how do we start?”

“We must free our bodies and our souls,” Gav went on, never at a loss.

“We’ll give rein to our instincts and we’ll hire a punt.”

“Yes, let’s!” cried David, ablaze with god-touched enthusiasm.

* * * * *

And then, as April turned into May, and May into June, the handsome

pair could be seen on all the rivers of Oxford. The Thames knew them

well, as also did the Isis, nor was a nook or creek on Cherwell or

on Char left unexplored by their venturous oars. David it was who

always plied the scull, while Gaveston lay on the punt’s keel in white

flannels, sometimes idly holding the tasselled rudder-cords, his

shirt of Tussore well open at the neck, revelling in this strenuous

out-of-doors life, and watching, day in, day out, his friend standing

sculptured above him against the jade-blue sky and athletically

wielding the long, dripping oar.

Sometimes they journeyed far out to the lush sequestered creeks of

Windrush and Evenlode, and, passing a score of poet-laden canoes,

would anchor in a dreaming silence to watch the curious swimmings of

ephemeral moles and the filigree antics of the booming water-beetles.

And there, with the blue dimness of evening folding softly in about

them, they would sup off rosy prawns and plump white-hearted cherries

in deep meadows all prankt with ragged camphire and callow and pied

cantharis, and then, in a calm moon-washed silence beyond the ruffling

of words or of laughter, they would float slowly, slowly back beneath

the orbing planets that overhung the distant towers of Iffley, trailing

their fingers coolly in the dimpling eddies of their wake, their ears

untroubled, save by the hoarse unearthly wailing of some night-flying

fritillary, or by the occasional clearing of each other’s throats.

Once from a tree that darkly reached out over the water came the

sudden capitous perfume of syringa, and the night grew unendurably

canicular. There was a plop. A discarded cherry-stone had tumbled from

the scuppers, and the mirror of the warm tranquil water was shivered

by annular ripples broadening sluggishly to either bank. That was all.

Nothing stirred. Gaveston was reduced to a state of utter poignancy he

had seldom known before.

“David,” he whispered across the rowlocks. “I can’t talk.…”

And, rising from the cushions, he stripped off his clothes there

and then in the fickle quicksilver light of the vagarious moon, and

plunged, a new Narcissus, into the star-strewn waters of the melancholy

stream. David, of course, did the same, and when Gaveston saw the

exquisite nakedness of his friend iridescent against the palpitating

hornbeams, he could no longer endure the fugacious mockery of the

arch-hamadryad, Time, and together they had wandered uneasily back in

the querulous silence of mutual, inexplicable exasperation.…

* * * * *

Inebriate though he was with this passionate Pantheism, which in its

intensity would have put to shame the great Walden himself in his

forest home, Gaveston did not altogether forget those social activities

which do so much to make Oxford (and probably Cambridge) a training

ground for all that is best in English public life. Profoundly as he

believed in Nature, he did not discount the urban amenities.[16]

[16] These words might well have been inscribed as an epitaph

on Mr. Budd’s watery tomb. (LIT. EXEC.)

Eights Week came in due course, and Gav was busied with the reception

of some offshoots of his family on the Penhaligon side. His mother

advised him of their coming in the postscript of a long letter from

Mürren, where she was passing the summer. And Gaveston was not slow to

close his Tussore collar, don the famous club tie of the Union Society,

and engage a suite at the Mitre Inn.

When could a merrier party than Gaveston’s have been seen on Isis’s

reedy banks? Seldom, if ever, have more envious glances been thrown

than at the superb barge on which, with the aid of the faithful David,

he entertained his summer-clad cousins. And never had laughter been

freer and more continuous than when, on the first of the eight days

of the festival, Gav showed his relatives the sights of the city,

annotating the rich book of Oxford’s beauty with comments which, for

wit and originality, had never been surpassed.

Immediately on the arrival of his guests, Gaveston’s flow of fresh,

untrammelled humour began. Even David was amazed when he pointed

to the marmalade factory outside the station and declared to the

incredulous cousins that it was Worcester College.[17]

[17] Messrs. Baedekers’ guidebook gives passim an admirably

accurate account of the chief features of interest, picturesque

viewpoints, etc., of the university and city. It may be

cordially recommended to readers of Mr. Budd’s work. (LIT.

EXEC.)

“So called after the sauce,” he added. And the quiet old houses of

the station yard echoed with the peals of girlish laughter from the

magnificent cream-coloured Daimler.

The grim walls of the prison hove in view.

“And what’s this, cousin ffoulis?” asked the Hon. Pamela Penhaligon

with an anticipatory laugh hovering on her lips.

“That I always forget,” answered Gav, with masterly affectation

of solemnity. “I think it’s either the official residence of the

Vice-Chancellor, or the premises of the Labour Club.”

The welkin rang.

Readily may it be imagined how quickly the week passed for the party

dowered with such an host. Even the long intervals each morning between

the bumping races could not pall Gav’s gaiety.

“Why is it called Eights Week?” asked the Hon. Isidora Penhaligon as

they waited patiently between the first and second heats of the Third

Divide.

“It isn’t, Is,” was Gav’s retort. “It’s called Waits Week!”

And, in whole-hearted enjoyment of his friend’s pyrotechnics, David had

almost choked over his delicious prunes in aspic.

* * * * *

The climax of all was, of course, the Cardinal College Fancy Dress

Dance. To the last moment Gaveston succeeded in keeping secret the

guise in which he planned to appear at the fashionable function. Not

even David was admitted to his councils. Lively was the speculation in

every college and hall, and even among the non-collegiate students, for

such there are. Even Mongo was intrigued. For all his years, little in

the college life escaped him, and he asked one day with a boyish laugh,

“Going in woad, Gav?”

The response was instantaneous.

“They can’t debag me, if I do!” The Manchester School face of the

President himself had relaxed when the repartee of his pupil had been

in good time reported to him.

The great night came. It was quarter to nine. The ball was at its

wildest. Never had more daringly original costumes mingled in more

unexpected combinations! The society newspapers’ reporters looked on

at a loss to convey some impression of how _outré_, how _bizarre_, was

this spectacle of Pierrots dancing with Dutch girls, Cavaliers with

Carmens, Asiatic princes of dusky hue with periwigged Pompadours of

a bygone age. But all of the gay assemblage, with all their fantasy

and all their strangeness, were eclipsed by the appearance of Gaveston

ffoulis, framed in the great Gothic doorway of the oak-lined Hall.

“What is he?” demanded the agog dancers, thronging around him.

“What are you?” asked those of his delighted intimates within speaking

distance.

All eyes sparkled to behold his young upstanding body, tanned at the

neck by the Oxfordshire sun. And a thrill of that bewilderment which is

the sincerest form of flattery ran through the historic Hall when the

unimaginable answer rang out:

“A nympholept!”

It was a great night.…

* * * * *

Next morning the Penhaligon party vacated their suite at the Mitre.

To the last, Gaveston showed himself abrim with merry conceits, and,

with cordial assurances that there was no better way of returning to

London, he installed his parting guests in a train at the London and

North Western Railway Company’s commodious station. It steamed out with

a chorus of grateful farewells, and when it faded from view Gav turned

to the still waving David with one parting witticism.

“They’ll have to change at Bletchley,” he said.

Eights Week was over.

CHAPTER X

OPEN DIAPASON

Six weeks later, in the musky fragrance of an August twilight, Gaveston

sat on the rocky cliffs above Ploumenar’ch-lez-Quémouk. For there, in

a charming old-world cottage of Breton gneiss, a brilliant reading

party from Wallace, under Mongo’s supervision, had assembled for the

vacation. He gazed out over the dark malachite waste of Atlantic

waters, reflecting how successful his choice of a _venue_ had proved,

and hummed softly the third act of “Tristan und Isolde.”

“Dear old Wagner!” he murmured.

Discussion over the various possibilities had been lively one night in

Mongo’s room during the Commemorative Week which so satisfactorily

rounded off that marvellous summer term.

Mongo opted for Minorca, but Monty Wytham vetoed that as too

Chopinesque.

“But my uncle might lend us a bothy at Tober-na-Vuolich,” ventured the

Marquis of Kirkcudbright (Ch. Ch.), hexametrically enough. But his

poetic ambitions and simple tastes were only too well known. There was

an uncomfortable silence. He shuffled his feet.

“Connemara?” put in Monty, after a moment’s reflection.

“Or the Lizard?” queried Peter Creek.

“The Broads?” tried Monty again, doubling.

“The Downs?”

“The Lake of Lucerne?”

Hard upon each other came the enterprising suggestions, but for each of

them Gaveston had an objection as conclusive as it was witty.[18]

[18] Unhappily these have not been recorded _in extenso_ by Mr.

Budd. (LIT. EXEC.)

“But you’re all so hackneyed,” he cried with peals of good-humoured

laughter. “These have all been done before, every one of them!”

“Well, tell us _your_ idea, Gav,” smiled Monty, with a touch of

defiance.

“I propose Brittany,” he answered quite simply.

There was a ripple of admiring approbation. Brittany was decided on.

Well had the choice been justified. Long had been the bicycle

expeditions through that unexplored fringe of glamorous old Celtic

seaboard; to St. Malo and Cancale, Rennes and Brest, and many another

half-forgotten shrine of old romance had they sped. And healthy had

been the life: reading from dawn till breakfast, bathing and romping

before luncheon, exploring caves before tea, collecting shells till

supper, and taking moonlit or starlit tramps over the neighbouring

menhirs and dolmens before going merrily to bed.

Thus the weeks flew past, with the inexorable rapidity of monotonously

happy hours. Nature grew rhythmical with the youthful happiness of

the Wallace reading party. With elaborate regularity the ebbs and

flows coursed over the gleaming sands; up rose the sun, bejewelled the

meridian sky, and set once more; each eventide there came an unique and

quotidian miracle of colour attendant upon its marine _accouchement_.

And nightly Gaveston stood breathless, hushed, pulsating, beneath the

twinkling of little, little stars, so deliberate and glamorous that

they seemed like to the remote, liturgical swinging of lanthorns,

carven with outlandish birds and belacquered with esoteric fishes, in

some half-religious dancing festival of Old Japan.

“I don’t think I was ever so happy!” said David one morning at

breakfast.

And no one disagreed with him.

* * * * *

It was with David that Gaveston passed most of his time. He always

found him a satisfying companion, ever eager to listen and encourage,

and to David one glowing afternoon, lying on the sand in the shady

mouth of a stalactitous cave, Gaveston exposed his new determination,

his latest programme.

“Power!” he said succinctly.

“Power! Power!” echoed back the stalactites.

“Power?” added David.

“Yes, power,” nodded Gaveston.

There was a silence.

Far off the waves lapped. A sea-mew flashed against the blue. A

stalactite dripped.

And Gaveston went on relentlessly to explain himself. Not for such as

he the cowardly retirement into the cloister of Art. Not for such as

he the perverse pursuit of an unattainable past, or the artificial

archaism of creeds outworn. What were these but phases, halts upon the

Greater Pilgrimage?

“Oh, quite,” said David, letting the warm sand trickle dreamily through

his fingers.

Power! He must impose Truth upon his fellows, the truth about

themselves, the truth about the world of yesterday and to-day and

to-morrow. That was power. That was life. And how else to do it but by

the Pen?

“Mightier than the sword it is, David, you know.”

David agreed.

And so was conceived the new review of politics, art, literature,

life, the drama, music, religion and ethnology, which was to galvanize

Oxford, and through Oxford, England, in the fast-approaching term. It

was daring in conception, but it was characteristic of the man.

Would Mongo contribute?

That was the first question to be decided. And when the great plan

was unfolded to him, and his assistance asked, the fresh, rosy face

of the aged veteran lit up. But “Can’t be done, I’m afraid, Gav,” he

said with a shake of his curious coloured locks. “The senior members

might object, you see.” It was a disappointment, but, nothing daunted,

the collaborators set out to find a title for their paper which should

adequately embody its ideals.

And this proved a harder task than might have been expected from so

brilliant a party. _Young Oxford_ was put forward in vain. _The New

Wallace_ was ruled out as parochial. David’s suggestion was _The

University Echo_, and _The Parnassian_ did not lack a few supporters.

Several showed enthusiasm for _The Cherwell_, but Gaveston it was

who won the unanimous suffrage of all with _The Mongoose_. Everyone

was delighted, and Vere O’Neill, the chartered artist of the party,

quickly etched on a scrap of paper lying to hand a clever woodcut of

that engaging bird. Gav put the finishing touches to it with a tube of

water-colours, and so the title, and the cover of at least the first

issue, were ready.

A policy? That was surely the next thing to be gone into, and again

there were differences while they sat up late one night over a friendly

bowl of _absinthe_, the national drink of the country. Outside the

cottage the Atlantic hurricanes battered upon the shutters.

Mongo considered that the problems of the Near East were perhaps

inadequately represented at Oxford. But O’Neill was strong for a

judicious blending of socialism and articraftiness.

“Back to Marx!” was his cry. It was a daring appeal, but all felt that

perhaps his quick Hibernian imagination might carry them too far.

Other tempting suggestions, philanthropic, poetic, imperialist, flashed

in the shadowy room, but David brought a refreshing current of cool

sanity into the somewhat hectic debate.

“I think Gaveston had better decide,” he said. And they knew he was

right.

At once Gaveston rose from his seat and stood by the fireplace. His

address was a masterpiece of editorial tact.

“You’re right, Mr. Arundel,” he began; and this revival of an all

but forgotten name at such an auspicious moment was recognized as

possessing the true ffoulis _cachet_. “You’re right. Our foreign

policy shall centre round the Balkans: they need a rallying point.

You’re right too, O’Neill: we shall insist on the importance of Art for

the Masses. You shall write an article on Morris Dancing and we shall

publish at least two poems in every number. You’re right too, David,

decidedly. And so are all of you others. We cannot, as you rightly

insist, go on allowing the present social system to stew in its own

juice. We certainly must not allow the great Pegasus of the English

poetic tradition to be left for ever ambling round Poppin’s Court, or

even to be emasculated in Carlyle Square. Nor must we allow the Empire

to be neglected.”

The applause was now general.

“But what,” demanded the speaker, “what is the link which will unite

all these admittedly various policies? What will give them a driving

force and a _sacrée union_?”

The company had already forgotten their foaming glasses on the table,

and were gathering round the handsome orator by the fireplace. They

knew that if Gaveston asked a question, it was only because he had an

answer ready. The pause was impressive, even agonizing.

“A Jacobite Democracy! The triumph of the People under the ægis of the

White Rose!”

No one interrupted, and Gaveston continued _con fuoco_.

“The ubiquitous support of constitutional monarchy as our foreign

policy! A Stuart as governor-general for every colony! A cottage and a

white rose garden for every working man! And down, down, down with the

Usurper from Germany!”

“And where does your real King live, Gav?” asked Mongo with his

inscrutable, and often perhaps unmeaning, smile. But none knew.

“All the laws made since the intrusion of Hanoverian George must be

nulled and voided, and we shall have a clean slate to write on. But I

must insist on the democratic nature of our programme. The old legitism

is worse than useless: we must be Jacobins as well as Jacobites! With

such a policy we cut the ground from beneath the feet of Socialists and

Conservatives alike. And then our only opponents will be the Liberals,

famous only as a discredited and disappearing faction--we shall augment

their unenviable fame. And our ensign, you ask?”

The question was rhetorical.

“Our ensign shall be the Hammer of Labour encircled by White Rose!”

While the enthusiastic applause rang among the rafters, O’Neill

hurriedly added this device to his cover design. And soon afterwards

all retired to their rooms, not, on this night of nights, to sleep, but

each to elaborate his first contribution to the new organ.

Only Gaveston and David lingered a little longer over the last glowing

embers. The two friends were speechless with emotion. The wind had

fallen. The tide was out. The silence was intense around the gneiss

walls.

Suddenly Gav rose, crossed the room, and drew open the curtain of the

tiny window. There was a dull glow in the dark skies.

“See, David,” he said very softly, “the dawn is breaking over

Ploumenar’ch-lez-Quémouk.”

* * * * *

It was.

CHAPTER XI

SPATE

David was deputed to go up to Oxford a few days before Michaelmas

term began, to make all necessary arrangements with printers, street

vendors, bill-posters and the local representatives of Labour and

Jacobite organizations. He went. His honest admixture of generous

enthusiasm and British common sense favourably impressed these humble

proletarians, and practical details were soon settled.

Gaveston of course had that sure instinct for flairing the right man

for the right job which marks the leaders of the twentieth century,

and when he stepped from his comfortable first-class carriage on to

the Oxford platform, it was no surprise to find that the city bore the

imprint of David’s devoted labours. Every available inch of advertising

space was covered.

+---------------------------+

| =OUT ON MONDAY.= |

| =No. 1 of= |

| =THE MONGOOSE,= |

| =edited by= |

| =GAVESTON FFOULIS.= |

| |

| =GOD SAVE KING RUPERT!= |

+---------------------------+

The posters were everywhere--on college gates and sandwichmen, in

the windows of the Bodleian, and, at nightfall, vast sky signs were

to curve in flashing splendour from Carfax to Magdalen. Round them

all day gathered excited groups of townsmen and gownsmen, eagerly

discussing the symbolism of the intertwined hammers and roses which

formed its tasteful border Such was their absorption that few noticed

the aristocratic figure whirling past them in a hansom-cab, who still

held on this Thursday afternoon the secrets which Monday was to reveal.

For Gaveston the sight of these crowds was moving: and, as he drove up

George Street, he remembered that echoing cave on the rock-bound Breton

coast, and the warm sand, and David’s questioning “Power?”…

* * * * *

On Friday Gav set to work, and went through the “copy,” as he had

already learned to call it. The supply of verse was enormous, political

articles were plenteous and violent, and, in anticipation of a

regular series of “Oxford Celebrities,” each member of the reading

party had anonymously penned a short, witty and highly appreciative

autobiography. But Gaveston’s editorial instincts told him that the

individual note was somehow missing. Yes, _The Mongoose_ must be

something different from all that had gone before--the _Letters of

Junius_, _The Yellow Book_, _The Chameleon_, _The Spectator_, _The

Palatine Review_. All must be outdone, and for a moment the task seemed

almost baffling.

But a ffoulis finds a way, and, sporting for the first time his oak,

Gav sat down that evening to write unaided the whole of the first issue.

All night the choiring bells heralded the flight of the hours through

the Octobral air; all night he kept his fire alight with faggots of

his friends’ rejected manuscripts. By five o’clock he had completed an

editorial statement of policy; four political leaders--on Jacobites,

Democrats, Jacobitic Democrats and Democratic Jacobites; a short,

witty, and not unappreciative autobiography; and a list of hockey and

O.T.C. fixtures for the term. More, by half-past five he had finished

two features designed to appeal to the less intellectual strata of

his fellow-undergraduates--a series of pithy personal paragraphs

headed “Things We Want To Know,” and a selection of letters on the

desirability of a bicycling Blue, signed by such pseudonyms as

“Wadhamensis Indignus,” “Ikonoklastes,” “Laudator Pasti,” and “A Friend

of W. G. Grace.”

It was a veritable _tour de force_. But the paper was taking on a more

distinctive tone, he felt.

Six o’clock. Only the promised poems were lacking now, and Gaveston

determined that, ere seven struck, he would have at least two poems

worthy of himself and of the latest of Oxford’s reviews. Iambics or

trochees? Sonnet or cæsura? Meditatively he stirred with the poker the

charred ashes of his friends’ inadequate versifications, but somehow

the divine afflatus lingered.

At last he lit a cigarette, mixed a cocktail, and resorted to a daring

expedient. He took down his well-fingered set of the little blue books

of Oxford Poetry. Here if anywhere would he find inspiration. Yet

no--his brain seemed a trifle weary, and still virgin-white lay the

paper before him.…

But, even if the heaven-sent flame did not descend, surely industry and

ingenuity could start the fire. Could he not fashion from this corpus

of the Oxford tradition, choosing a line here and there, a living,

eclectic, synthetic Poem? Surely in this way would emerge something

exquisitely pure, embodying the undiluted essence of the Oxford he

loved so dearly. And by half-past six he had succeeded. He ran his eye

lovingly over it.

_Le Mal_

My time in grief and merriment

In low melodious threnodies of Lent,

Of reeds and fanciful psalteries

Has more strings than our stringed instruments,

O Lily Lady of Loveliness,

God’s beauteous innocence!

O fathomless, incurious sea!

Light lips upon the lilied pool,

Sounding her passionate symphony,

Grow fat once more, and seem to be made full!

When you and you sit by the fire,

I would to God thou wert my own good son--

τούτῳ μάλιστα δὴ προσθετέον

O Lord of light and laughter and desire!

He replaced the row of little blue books, where he might find them

were they needed, and read over the poem they had given him from their

storehouse.

Yes, it was the right stuff, he felt sure--and authentic too. Why, the

æsthetic effort had stimulated him. There was one more to do. And he

remembered his untasted cocktail, tasted it, and forgot his weariness.

For nearly an hour poem after poem flowed incontinent from his pen.

There were twenty-two in all, but from the glittering galaxy he chose

but one. It was indeed a starry gem--and all his own.

_To One Whom and Whither I Wot Not_

Since morrow sees our endermost adieu,

I’ll have no crying or sighing haggardly

Out of the dark void. But Gargantuan gauds

I’ll lay on your white body. _Lutany_

_Shall soothe our slumbers._ Then for me and you

A knell. And quietude thereafterwards.

He read it, and read it again. Yes, it stood the test. And musing he

thought how Hérédia would have liked the shape of it, and how Mallarmé

would have loved to attempt just those rhythms, how Rops would have

delighted to illustrate it, and how Finden, perhaps, or Finck, would

have made music for it in some minor mode and with strange fantastic

counterpoints.…

After a light breakfast Gaveston went round in person to the printer.

He handed him the fateful packet of manuscript.

“You will have it on sale on Monday? We have promised the public.”

“Of course, sir.”

The die was cast into Rubicon.…

* * * * *

Monday came, and with it of course the unparallelable success of

_The Mongoose_. By nine o’clock the boys and decrepit vendors

engaged for its distribution had perforce to be replaced by stalwart

commissionaires who could withstand the frantic mobbing of impatient

purchasers. All that day, and well on into Tuesday night, the

printing-press in Holywell was a-roaring; bales upon bales poured out

hot from the linotype; motor-vans dashed serriedly towards the station

where the mail-trains stood awaiting the provincial consignments.

Gaveston was not ungratified. He could feel the pulse of Oxford beating

in his own. He was universally feted, save in the fast disappearing

Liberal Club, which, by Thursday, could only boast its honorary and

corresponding members; he was caricatured, but respectfully, in the

_University Gazette_; he was thrice, but in vain, invited to stand as a

candidate for the library committee of the Union; and the chairman of

the Boating Club offered him an honorary Blue.

But his head was not turned by the exuberance and gusto and brio which

surged around him. He remained simple, unaffected, friendly; daily with

a laugh he would put all the credit on David’s deprecating shoulders;

nightly he would cable reports of his progressive triumphs to his

mother, who was passing the winter on Coney Island and making a deep

impression on the Wall Street Five Hundred.

Triumphs grew cumulative with the weeks. The fourth number contained

a ten-page supplement of Gav’s latest musical compositions (delicious

morceaus which aptly combined the piquancy of Lulli with the modernity

of Lalo), three coloured reproductions of paintings from his own brush,

a direct invitation in leaded type to Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria to

return and claim his rightful Throne, and details of a Free Insurance

Scheme for Regular Readers. And the fifth number, due next term, was

planned to surpass even this.

But meanwhile a pressing need devolved upon his Atlas-like shoulders.

The dear room of staircase XVII, with all its associations, was grown

too small for him! In the one moment of disloyalty to Wallace that he

ever knew, he envied Lord Kirkcudbright his spacious suite in Ch. Ch.

Coll. But careful searchings with the faithful David’s aid at length

discovered the perfect lodgement.

“What a dream of a place!” was Gaveston’s exclamation when his eye

first rested on Malmaison Lodge. And well did it deserve the tribute!

It was a little, low William IV house; over the leaning, whitewashed

slopes of its walls wine-dark ivy, passion flowers and celandine,

wistaria, magnolia and the cuckoo-haunted Virginy creeper stencilled

the careful patterns of their rivalry. The floor sank modestly beneath

the level of the tangled, towsled garden, three neat steps curtseyed

to the prim Queen Anne doorway, and there was the most comical little

mezzanine imaginable. No road led to Malmaison Lodge, for it lay remote

in an unfrequented purlieu, and, like the gingerbread cottage in the

faery tale, it looked forgotten but not neglected. There was something

discreetly morganatic in its air: in such a spot might princes soothe

their crown-chafed heads, or cardinals forget awhile the insistent

kisses that wear away their jewelled rings. And to crown all, the

landlady’s name was Mrs. Grimaldi. When Gav learned that, he declared

that no other house would bear the looking at.

And a rare body Mrs. Grimaldi proved herself!

With that well-bred ease which was instinctive in even the farouchest

of the ffoulises, Gav drew out her history in the course of their

first interview. He began tactfully, by talking of himself for

three-quarters of an hour--it gave Mrs. Grimaldi confidence.

“… and so on my advice she got divorced again,” he ended. “She’ll be

up next term, I hope, and I know you’ll make friends with her, Mrs.

Grimaldi.--But now, I’ve done all the talking so far,” he went on as

the good woman appreciatively blushed. “Won’t you tell me something

about yourself?”

She curtseyed, and began.

“On the font it was Selina Kensit, sir, they called me, but now it’s

Mrs. Puffin really, though me ’usbin’ always called ’isself Grimaldi,

perfessional like. I wish as you could ’a’ seen ’im, sir! W’y, ’e could

put ’is ’ead through ’is legs and then juggle with lit candles and live

ferrets fit to frighten you into pepilipsis. It gave me a fair turn, it

did, first time as ever I see ’im. But soon I didn’t so much as turn an

’air. You see, I was an artiste meself.”

She nodded.

“And were _you_ a contortionist too, Mrs. Grimaldi?” Gaveston asked,

looking with amazement at her elephantine form, bulging and bursting in

every direction from the crimson bombazine that vainly essayed to hold

it in.

“Lor’ bless you, sir, I should ’ope not!”

“But what then----?”

“I dove.”

“Dove?”

“From the top of the ’ippodrome, sir.”

Gaveston roared with laughter. “Into a teacup, I know!” he cried.

“You will ’ave your joke, sir, I can see,” smiled Mrs. Grimaldi,

preening herself. “Beauty Clegg, the Bermondsey Mermaid, they called

me on the programme, and my magenta tights suited me a treat, though I

says it as shouldn’t.”

“I believe they still would, Mrs. Grimaldi,” he threw in, winningly.

“But after our marriage, Mr. Puffin was earnin’ good money, and ’e

didn’t care about my goin’ on with me divin’, though ’e admitted

straight that I ’ad a career in front of me. But besides, I was puttin’

on flesh.” The landlady gave a pathetic heave of her enormous frame.

“So I lived like a lady afterwards.”

“And how long have you been here, then?” Gav asked.

“Well, twenty years ago, Mr. Grimaldi, ’e went before; and I was ’ard

put to it till I set up ’ere.”

“I’m sorry to think that, Mrs. Grimaldi.”

“Oh, no one can say as ever I was gay meself, though I did ’ave me

troubles. But the p’lice are that interfering, reg’lar nosy Parkers,

_I_ call ’em--but Lor’ bless you, sir, young gentlemen will be young

gentlemen, now won’t they?--and my girls never made no complaints.

Reg’lar mothered them, I did, and …”

“I’m sure you did, Mrs. Grimaldi,” Gaveston interrupted, feeling that

the ground grew delicate. Henceforward he had better restrict his

questionings to the professional period of his landlady’s varied career.

But he was far from narrow-minded, and he took seven of her rooms for

the coming term. They would be redecorated, of course, he explained,

and an additional bath installed. With a little foresight he might

yet make Malmaison Lodge a new and brighter Chequers. For when he had

already engaged his rooms, he made an enchanting discovery. Behind the

house there was a little lavender-garden, and at its centre a classic

gazebo evocatory of the Age of Stucco, in the elegant decay of its

caduke and lezarded pilasters, a _rocaille_ fountain, too, that had

not played since poor long-dead demi-reps had received by its brink

the libertines of the Regency, and round it three moss-clad Cupidons

of lead, who must have watched unblushingly the dangerous dalliance of

crinoline with pantaloon.

These domestic preparations made a grateful break in a busy public

life, and term came to an end almost before Gaveston had realized that

November had slipped into December.

But he caught the 8.37 to Paddington on December 10th.

CHAPTER XII

FUNAMBULESQUE

Dinner-time on the 11th found Gaveston complaining about the half-baked

condition of a _soufflé_ at the best hotel in Munich.

He never did things by halves, and his Christmas Vacation was to be

devoted entirely to the furtherance of _The Mongoose’s_ political aims.

This trip abroad had been planned for some weeks, and the strictest

Teutonic discipline had been enforced at every frontier-station to

keep this most _incognito_ of journeys a secret. In his breast-pocket

he carried a letter of introduction: for, although the editor of _The

Mongoose_ was of course not unknown at the Bavarian Court, Gaveston

knew the value of quickly establishing a personal relationship.

He had been quick to consult Uncle Wilkinson.

“Of course I’ll help you, m’ boy,” the veteran diplomat had said

reassuringly. “I’ll give you a _lettre de créance_ that’ll let you have

your _entrées_ without any _démarches_.”

And he had. It seemed that once … an Australian soprano … a pearl … a

very High Personage indeed … Regents-theater … _schön gemütlich_ … but,

well, a little unpractical.…

Nothing was ever divulged about what happened during the first three

weeks of that vacation. Gaveston was always discreet. But Monty Wytham,

spending a few days at Heidelberg, had been surprised to see his

college friend passing through the station in a special train, with

blinds partially drawn, and wearing in his button-hole a tiny rosette,

like the _légion d’honneur_, but white.

* * * * *

There was no secrecy about the second half of that vacation. Gaveston

knew he must now test the Great Heart of the People. Whatever his

congenital tastes, he never forgot that he styled himself proletarist

as well as legitimarian, and the famous University Hostel in

Haggerston, E., was the scene of three adventurous weeks of social

exploration.

Not of course his first effort in that _genre_. Gaveston’s strong sense

of collegiate duty had led him to visit the Lads’ Club established by

Wallace in the poorer quarter of the dream-enwrought city. And many a

rich friendship he had formed with the burly lads in its gymnasium, its

strictly undenominational conventicle, and its merry week-end sea-side

camps. Not soon could he forget his spiritual wrestling with young Bob

Limber, for instance, and how one foggy evening, unable longer to

support the mustulent odour of damp clothes and the rough-and-tumble

hurly-burly of the indoor football room, he had led the promising

youngster out of the Club, and had walked and talked him up and down

the ash-strewn towpath beside the stagnant crime-inviting water of the

canal, while slimy drops of verdigris guttered on their heads from

rusty, disused railway-bridges, and round them slowly fell pieces of

plaster peeling from the fissured walls of warehouses obscenely stained

with damp and eczematous with decay. For three hours he had striven to

convince the obstinate but fascinated youth (a butcher’s apprentice,

was he not?) of the high moral value of punting. But the bets which

poor Bob made owing to a misunderstanding of Gaveston’s meaning, had

been lacking in method and ruinous in result.

[Illustration: SPIRITUAL WRESTLING WITH YOUNG BOB LIMBER]

Now Gaveston played an even more active part in social reform.

Through the murk-bound and desuete alleys of Hoxton, where no policeman

(or “copper” as he would ingratiatingly say to the natives) dared

venture, Gaveston strolled carolling the popular ditty of the day. He

had a way with him, the battered women-folk used to say as he passed

them with a kindly wave of his hand. Sometimes as he lay sleepless in

the squalider doss-houses, he wondered whether fate might not bring him

face to face there with that astonishing woman who, on the pavement

outside the Café Régale, had once given him such an astounding glimpse

of London’s uttermost underworld.

Gaveston was nothing if not thorough. Food that was not Kosher rarely

passed those once fastidious lips of his, and unblenchingly he had gone

to spend a night in one of Limehouse’s most notorious dope-dens.

“Terrible,” the hardened Head of the Hostel had cried, when Gaveston

had told him of what he had seen. Not that he had tasted there the

papaverous poison--that was a phase whose charms he had long since

exhausted: no, on the contrary, he had preached to the degenerate

denizens more salutary, more British habits of relaxation.

“Muchee lovee opiumee,” the Chinks had protested. But Gaveston was firm.

“Dumbee bellee muchee betteree,” he had insisted.

The ffoulises were all linguists.

He returned to Oxford convinced of the immediate importance of pressing

his campaign. Munich and Haggerston had been equally encouraging. The

fifth number of _The Mongoose_ was already in the press. It contained

a signed interview with a well-known Chinatown bruiser, and an

unpublished photograph of The King. On the day before publication the

bolt fell. Jade-eyed jealousy had dogged the footsteps of success. Two

powers had clashed.

In an ukase of fine Latinity which Gaveston was the first to

appreciate, the Vice-Chancellor ordered the suppression of _The

Mongoose_ and the rustication of its editor unless its policy were

changed.

For a moment Gaveston thought of boldly publishing the dread decree and

appealing to the immense force of public opinion. That would be the

Areopagitical gesture, wouldn’t it? But should he not rather temper it

with the practice of the old school and try diplomacy? With the trusted

David he discussed the subject monologically on an afternoon’s tramp

over Shotover.

Little was his position to be envied. He stood alone, alone against

the most autocratic power left in modern Europe. One by one his

collaborators had unobtrusively resigned. Only David remained as

business-manager.

“But glory, David,” he said as they reached the summit of Shotover

Hill, “glory is ever a solitary apex. I have always found that. And the

Vice-Chancellor, though he be only the Warden of Rutland College, must

have found it too.”

“I expect he has,” nodded the business manager.

“Then we have common ground, he and I. I shall try diplomacy.”

And he did.

Next morning he repaired to the official residence of the

Vice-Chancellor. But not without difficulty, for political feeling

had been running high these days. Stout barricades had been erected

across both ends of the Turl; the cross-streets were permanently

closed to traffic; only senior members of the University who had

passed the climacteric age of sixty-three, or such junior members as

had certificates of loyal character from the Hebdomadal Council, or

one of the non-political clubs, were allowed to pass the barrier.

Pickets of chosen men from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light

Infantry, steel-helmeted and armed to the teeth, guarded the venerable

Warden of Rutland College from the possible approach of wild-eyed

trade-unionists, Chartists or Agnostics--for such abounded, at large in

the streets.

Gaveston, however, was known even to the rough soldier lads, and

had only to show to their officer the passport which Uncle Wilkie’s

diplomatic influence had procured for his last trip to Brittany. He was

escorted to the massive gates of Rutland, whence protruded half-a-dozen

Stokes guns manned by stalwart Rhodes Scholars who in their home

townships had been office-bearers of the Ku-Klux-Klan, and through the

barbed wire entanglements which covered the immemorial gravel[19] of

the quadrangle.

[19] Alas! no longer. (LIT. EXEC.)

In the ante-ante-chamber he smilingly complied with the senior

proctor’s request to allow a search of his person for anarchistical

bombs or seditious literature, and in the ante-chamber he signed a

solemn affirmation that he possessed no copies of the works of Bernard

Shaw, the Grand Guignol dramatists (whose influence was then so

profoundly felt), or the early poems of William Wordsworth, and that he

had passed Responsions with not less than third-class honours.

At last the innermost portal was unlocked and creaked slowly open. As

he entered the sanctum of his formidable rival Gaveston straightened

himself instinctively.

But the Vice-Chancellor himself was an anti-climax.

At a glance Gav saw that here at least no elaborate diplomacy would be

needed: the characteristic ffoulis charm would suffice. The venerable

Warden, for his part, veteran though he was of a thousand such

encounters, saw that at last he had met a duellist worthy of a finer

Toledo steel than ever he could wield. He glanced out of his armoured

window towards the towering dome of the Shelley Memorial, and his lips

tightened.

Gaveston, twinkle-eyed, made the opening _démarche_.

“The Emperor, sir, is come to Canossa,” he said, a charming smile

playing about his attractive lips.

And flattered, as he was meant to be, by the happy historical metaphor,

the old man let his Machiavellian features relax into a nervous, but

sincere, smile.

Gav never let psychological moments slip.

“I don’t think you need repeat that speech you had prepared for me,” he

followed up quickly. “I know what you were going to say.”

The sagacious but undiplomatic functionary looked in amazement at the

handsome figure before him. His lips struggled to frame a reply, but

Gav raised a deprecating hand.

“You were going to say,” he continued sternly, “that my words are

read from the Brahmapoutra to the Potomac, that a thousand races in

a hundred climes see in them the authentic voice of Oxford. You were

going to say that the stability of the Empire was threatened. You were

going perhaps to say that I paid my college bills with blood-stained

roubles, and, for all I know, that the foremost principle of a

university must always be _Mens sana in corpore sano_. Were you not?”

The old man winced at the last shrewd thrust, and bowed his head.

“Of course you were,” said Gav, a touch of pity in his voice. “But,

believe me, you are wrong. Time and truth are on my side.”

Speechless, the Vice-Chancellor nodded.

“It will be easiest if you resign,” said Gav quietly. “I shall see that

a fit successor is found for you. But, to save your face, I am prepared

to make some slight modification in my policy, if you have one to

suggest.”

“Thank you, Mr. ffoulis,” answered the outwitted reactionary. “Thank

you. I would suggest.…”

His voice quavered plaintively.

“Yes?”

“Well, let your theory be what it will, Mr. ffoulis, but I would

suggest, and most earnestly, that you refrain, so far as you find it

possible, from attacking the present Government--if you don’t mind an

old man’s advice.”

Gav clapped him on the back.

“Of course not,” he said with a reassuring smile. “That can soon be

arranged, and your resignation shall be announced for reasons of

health.”

The Warden nodded assent.

“I must go now,” said Gaveston. “I am a busy man.”

* * * * *

The rifest of rumours ran through Oxford that afternoon when the bruit

was abroad that the Editor of _The Mongoose_ had interviewed the

Vice-Chancellor. The great political clubs were abuzz with conflicting

accounts of what had taken place. Even in the deserted halls of the

Liberal Club the solitary waiter paced to and fro murmuring rumours to

himself. A monster demonstration of local Jacobites with a white flag

was held outside the county gaol, where it was believed that Gaveston

had that morning been secretly immured. But all dubieties were laid low

when, according to antique custom, the tolling bell of the Radcliffe

Camera announced that the Vice-Chancellor had resigned office.

The stupefied silence in the city was broken only by the sombre

reverberations of that passing bell.

A hurriedly convoked meeting of the Hebdomadal Council issued formal

notice before nightfall that the Warden of Rutland had resigned for

reasons of ill-health. And profound was the impression when it was

announced a little later that the vacant post would be filled by

Archibald Arundel, M.A., Dean of Wallace College.

“We have won, David,” said Gav calmly when the news reached him in his

quiet inner sitting-room.

But David could make no reply. His eyes glistened in the twilight as he

looked out over the darkling quadrangle.…

* * * * *

_The Mongoose_ had won the bitter battle for free speech and generous

ideals, and pæans of well-merited praise welled up for Gaveston from

every corner of the kingdom. The Press was united in felicitation of

its promising contemporary, save only the _Rutlandshire Argus_, whose

petty regionalism no wider idealism could mitigate, and _Punch_, whose

tradition it always is to support the under-dog in public affairs.

But very few were moved by its cartoon that week, which showed the

ex-Vice-Chancellor seated in a cavern on the banks of a river whose

ripples formed the word _ISIS_, his venerable head bowed over a table

on which lay the University mace and a doffed crown of office. Before

him stood, not Gaveston, but a female figure whose classic draperies

bore the device _COMMON SENSE_ and who held before the old man’s

dreaming eyes a great scroll. On it was inscribed the legend: RESURGES:

NON CANOSSA SED BARBAROSSA.

But even to a defeated rival a ffoulis keeps troth: the agenda of _The

Mongoose_ were honourably modified.

In the superlatively able fifth number, eagerly anticipated from

Downing Street to Wilhelmstrasse, a trenchant leader demonstrated

that, when the King should come from over the water to establish His

proletarian theocracy, no ministers could be found better for His

projects than those who made up the present Government.

It was signed with a modest _ff_.

Consols soared to a firm 51½.

CHAPTER XIII

CHAMPAIGN

As the Lent term moved unimpeded to its prepaschal end, Gaveston was

faced with an inevitable query. Where was he to pass the Vacation?

Aided by a shelf of Black’s Beautiful Books and the rarer writings of

Mr. Edward Hutton, he weighed the relative charms of Cefalu and Auch,

Nikchitch and Gijon, Châlons and Charenton, Parknasilla and Portobello.

All very well in their foreign way, but he had his future to consider.

Should he not rather accept a few of those innumerable invitations

to British Country Houses that were stuck in the mirror above the

fireplace in his Malmaison Lodge study?

David had often protested against his friend’s wasteful habit of

treating invitations as useless but ornamental, not even answering

Commands from exiled Royalties. (The fame of _The Mongoose_ had reached

Cannes and Twickenham.) But Gaveston would have none of it.

“No, David,” he would always answer, “they aren’t wasted. The only

invitations worth having are the second ones.”

Besides, in the dear, far-off days of Karlsbad and Knocke and Karsino

his mother had often nonchalantly warned him against the trickeries of

foreign titles. (There had been a Polish Prince once whom Gaveston was

already learning to call “Daddy” when he turned out to be a Turkish

Bath attendant absconding from Arkansas.…)

At first Gaveston intended to put all the invitations into the

waste-paper basket, and draw one (or perhaps two) out, leaving the

choice of the lucky hostess to chance, but the sight of a letter

written in Black Letter on vellum paper made him hesitate. Was it not

too dangerous a lottery? He took the letter up and read--

_Telegrams: Novena, Wilts._

_Stations: Highchurch and Deane._

_Minsterby Priory,

Abbot’s Acre,

Wilts, Eng._

_Vigil of St. Quinquagesima._

_Dear Mr. ffoulis_,--

_The Baron and I would be happy beyond words if we could count

you among our quite tiny party for Holy Week and Eastertide.

The Baron, of course, is a cousin of dear Prenderby Rooke (the

financier, you know), who had a lot of business with your

step-father in the old days. So we aren’t exactly strangers,

are we? Do come._

_Afftely. yrs._

_(Baroness) Leah Finqulestone._

Which step-father, Gaveston wondered; but a glance at Gotha’s Almanack

decided him in a trice against acceptance. “Phew!” he said to David,

“what an escape!” and the Baroness’s invitation fell heavily back into

the “refusals tray.”

But there were others.

* * * * *

It was a gay spring morning. Term was over, but, sitting though he

was in a first-class Great Western smoker, Gaveston could hardly

realize the fact. For where was the familiar landscape of Berks and

Bucks stretching like a sea between his terms and his vacations, his

vacations and his terms? Where was deserted Didcot? Where the reasty

biscuitries of Reading? And where were Wormwood Scrubbs with their

Cyclopean hangar, and their promise of speedy arrival at familiar

Paddington? Oh, of course; he remembered now: he had left Oxford from

the Down Platform.

And on purpose. The train was the only place (except his bed) where

Gaveston was often alone, and cradled by its rhythmical monotone of

sound, he always surrendered himself to reflection and revery. With

unseeing eyes he gazed upon the expanse of gloomy Drinkwater country

which so emphatically was not the usual well-brooked but over-factoried

valley of the Thames. How many hours, he thought, one wastes in

unmotivated journeyings, in merely purposeless vagulity! How futile

the pursuit of action for its own poor sake! For what lay before him

at his journey’s end? An English country-house, an English week-end

party, with its drinks and its drains, its horses and its carriages,

its ghosts and its flirtations, its back-stairs and its back-chat--with

no break in its well-bred monotony.

He saw it all stretching prospectively and preposterously before him,

all of it: the dormant station on an almost impossibly bifurcated

branch-line, its wooden platform bright with Easter Lilies and

lanky-Lot’s-wife, and marked [Illustration] Stops by Request in

Bradshaw; the rustic _gaucherie_ of the solitary and half-wit porter,

and then the glimpse of the perky cockade of the expectant groom;

and that predestinedly convergent encounter in the wagonette with

the other, but not over-numerous, guests, who, though only too well

known to each other, had travelled down in separate, but first-class,

compartments; and then that excruciatingly culminative moment of

arrival beneath the pompous Georgian portico, with the formalized words

of welcome slipping upwards into its stucco recesses, that gossipy tea

on the terrace, or, if season or weather proved inclement, in the mauve

drawing-room, and that chaste and tapestried bedroom in the bachelors’

wing with (yes) the assertively blue hot-water can ready in the,

certainly adequate, but somehow not urbanely inviting, basin.

And already he could see, foreshortened before him in a (should he

venture?) prescient perspective, all that weary business of the

_toilette_ regulated by a complicated, and never, before the day of

departure, fully comprehended, system of gongs, and that winding

circuitous descent down gradually broadening and more and more

elaborately balustraded staircases to a long, but to Gaveston’s taste

(he was a real _gourmand_) hopelessly agricultural (he could not

conscientiously call it a dinner, but rather, a) meal.…

However, he’ld have to go through with it now. He owed that to his

mother.

For it was by Lady Penhaligon’s request, cabled from Canterbury, Pa.,

a fortnight ago, that he had accepted Lord Jordan’s invitation (the

fourth) to spend a frankly rather political week-end at Oylecombe

Towers. Her wire had decided him.

_Gav dear do go Jordans if they ask such old friends of

dear Joey how cold here do wrap up well dear spring days so

deceptive have you met boy called David Paunceford love Mums_

And with the compression of a skilled journalist he had answered.

_Been Jonathan years kisses Gav_

And here he was.…

* * * * *

The charming _cloisonné_ clock in Gaveston’s dressing-room was busily

preparing to strike eight.

He gave a last glimpse in the cheval-glass at his elaborately pleated

dress-shirt, in which gleamed three studs of solid amber, each with an

embedded fly. In the further distances of Oylecombe Towers clanged a

gong, and the young man went down to the great ancestor-hung hall with

his usual good intention of being the life and soul of the party.

Lord and Lady Jordan stepped forward to welcome their remarkable guest.

His Lordship’s face was unfamiliar to Gaveston. A slightly older

generation had known its fine, hawk-like features extremely well. He

had long been conspicuous in the _entourage_ of the late King, but

changed traditions at Court had latterly made the first holder of the

Jordan Barony an almost unrecognized figure on the Mall. Nowadays,

though his town-house was not a hundred miles from Park Lane, he lived

in rural seclusion at the Towers, with occasional visits to the City

of London itself. His knowledge of the world, however, remained wide.

With the same facility and gestures he could talk of shells and bears,

eagles and bulls, of Brazil and both the Bethlehems, while the motto

SI VIS PACEM, entwined aposiopesically about his escutcheon, well

exemplified his Liberal political instincts.

Gaveston touched her ladyship’s hand with his lips.

Considerably younger than her husband, and only comparatively recently

married, she too was one of those tantalizingly complex personalities

which only an old landed aristocracy can evolve. Born in Latvia, and

educated in a pensionnat hard by Warsaw, she was at once _mondaine_

and mystic. Her keen sense of social values would have shamed Debrett

or Burke themselves, but at the same time she appeared to be an eager

searcher after the greater and more eternal aspects of Truth, an

untiring student of Burnt Njal and other Oriental works upon religion,

and indefatigable in her study of the lesser-known works of Freud, of

which she read even the appendices; (the German language presented few

difficulties to her.)

“Delighted,” murmured Gaveston, as the other guests were presented to

him. “The usual set!” he said inwardly.

So _that_ was Sir Nicholas Gomme, was it? Gaveston looked at him

with interest, for the famous Irish Secretary had been specially

asked, he knew, to meet the rising young man from Wallace. How many

chapters of contemporary history had not risen Minerva-like from that

quasi-Napoleonic cranium! Free Trade legislation, _concerti_, wars

and rumours of wars, sonnets, bridge-debts, and snuff-boxes. Nothing

was too modern to appeal to his vivid imagination; he was an admitted

adept in New thought and _Art Nouveau_, and had acquired a deserved

reputation in three continents for his philately. A man who had lived!

And Gaveston looked at Sir Nicholas’ silvering hair not without respect.

And there was Tierra del Fuego, the painter of the moment. Gaveston

had last seen him in the Régale, in those ludicrously far-off days

of his Bohemian life in London. He painted everything in curves. In

Chelsea they spoke of him reverently as _Le père du globisme_, but,

like many an original theorist, he was a poor conversationalist.

“_La ligne droite, voilà l’ennemi!_” he would interject repeatedly

and ferociously. But fortunately this, his only, constatation usually

fitted well into most discussions, artistic, political, or financial.

Close by stood the venerable Bishop of Barset, his shrewd kindly

eyes blinking benignly at all around. “_Such_ a favourite of mine,”

whispered Lady Jordan to Gaveston. “_So_ broad-minded!”

And there was Major-General Tremullion, ablaze with the decorations of

the Irish War. Gav had once pilloried him in an article as “apparently

wishing to die as hard as he had lived.” And deep in conversation

beside the roaring hearth stood the representatives of contemporary

literature: Ermyntrude Tropes, who lived on the novels she published

about her friends, and the immaculate figure of Augustus Tollendale,

who lived on the novels he was dissuaded from publishing about his.

But the party was apparently still one short.

“I can’t think where Bladge can be, Mr. ffoulis,” said Lady Jordan, who

looked a trifle distracted; “I wanted you to take her in. But really we

can’t wait.”

Gaveston bowed his surprised regret, and the brilliant house-party

swept into the banqueting hall.

Over the substantial viands the guests soon warmed to their favourite

topics, and Gav was enabled to see how subtle and intricate was the

blending of politicians and artists which made the Jordans’ parties

familiar to every reader of the _Tatler_ and the _Sketch_. He listened

appreciatively to the shreds of conversation that floated up the table

towards him.

“Ireland!” gasped General Tremullion. “I only asked for fifty tanks,

and they----” But the adroit hostess had perceived the warrior’s

choleric frustration and changed the subject.

“For Lent reading,” affirmed the Bishop confidently, “I always

recommend the ‘Mahabharata.’”

Mr. Tollendale made a hurried note.

And, yes, those were the measured tones of the Irish Secretary himself.

“I admit that I should have liked to change that over-rated North

Borneo for their almost untouched Mauritius; and they’d have done it

too, if only.…”

“What a _coup_ it would have been!” interrupted Gaveston, his quick

imagination kindling at the opening vistas of a new Colonial policy.

“You see, I think they knew I’d been concentrating on Africa for some

time now.” The great Statesman continued, “For, as a matter of fact, I

can tell you, in confidence of course, that, I’m, er … well, I’m buying

Seychelles and Liberia, against a rise.”

Gaveston gasped. What a scoop for _The Mongoose_!

“And I don’t mind telling you,” the booming voice went on, “that the

King himself is jealous of my three-cornered Cape of Good Hopes.”

“Three cornered…?” Gaveston’s head swam. But only for a moment. How

it all came back to him! His wits rallied, and he recovered himself.

“I hope, Sir Nicholas,” he winged the words down the long table, “you

won’t swap a defaced Ireland for a second-hand St. Helena.”

It was a characteristic lightning-flash, and a thunder-clap of

delighted laughter broke from all, not least from Sir Nicholas himself;

he appreciated the subtle compliment. The Jordans gazed proudly at

their promising _débutant_. Miss Tropes made a hurried note. Seldom had

even Gaveston himself felt so sure of himself or so proud of the great

ffoulis heritage of wit.

But while the laughter still echoed in the high-flung rafters, Sir

Nicholas was seen to be gazing intently towards the door, a charmed

delight in his eyes. The late-comer!

“_Quelle fille!_” he ejaculated with a graceful, old-world bow.

Everyone turned.

“Bladge!” came the unanimous cry. “Bladge!”

And even Gaveston felt that the spot-lime of interest had for a moment

shifted from himself. He too turned, and saw, framed there in the noble

Tudor doorway, an entrancing vision of loveliness, English and womanly

at once, shimmering snake-like in sequins and a picture-hat. Was it--or

was it not? Why, yes! It was none other than Lady Blandula Merris! And

in their frenzied welcome the guests let their very aspic grow cold.

“Bladge!”--so _that_ was her name among the glittering few whom she

counted as her intimates.… He must remember that.

[Illustration: “BLADGE!” CAME THE UNANIMOUS CRY.]

Although the daughter of one of our lesser-known marquesses, Lady

Blandula was certainly the foremost figure of British womanhood, more

wryly _chic_ than any but the most anglicized _Parisiennes_, more

sought after than any Royalty, more daring than any Bohemian, more

photographed than any race-horse. No dance could boast itself a ball

unless she graced it, no _matinée_ charitable if she did not assist,

nor were any theatricals amateur in which she did not perform. Slum

missions and night-clubs were as one to her, for NIL ALIENUM PUTO was

the proud old Merris motto. Her beauty was rivalled only by her superb

audacities. To those who knew her she seemed Virtue incarnate, but

dark stories were whispered round the envious suburbs of her more

than Paphian orgies.… As she sat down in the vacant place beside him,

Gaveston ffoulis felt that at last he had met a woman whom he could

respect.

Yet he felt oddly aware that, somewhere or somewhen, he had met her

before.… All through the princely meal he watched her discreetly but

closely--in what incarnation could it have been … or what æon?… When he

was a King in Babylon…?

After dinner a galaxy of intelligentsian entertainment was provided by

the experienced hosts; planchette, charades, chamber-music, recitations

and auto-suggestion were freely indulged in; and in the Edward VII

smoke-room the kindly host grew deliberately reminiscent. But Gav and

Lady Blandula, in their unconventional way, were sitting out on one

of the greater staircases, sipping liqueurs and bandying witticisms

highly characteristic of each other. Suddenly Bladge slipped from her

finger a curiously wrought ring of turquoise, and handed it to her

surprised, and almost flattered, companion.

“Yours, Gav,” she said with a champagne-like laugh. “I got it on false

pretences, you know--and I’ll draw you a cheque for its wrapping.”

Gav looked at her in puzzled silence.

“Oh, stupid!” she rattled on. “And is your soul _still_ so beautiful?

My body certainly is!”

“But really----”

“No, I could see all the time you didn’t really know your Plotinus

Arbiter, _mon petit rat_!”

And Gaveston remembered. So _that_ had been another of the famous

syren’s tricks! This one at all costs must be kept from the

newspapers.… His look spoke for him, and Lady Blandula laughed heartily

as she went on.

“Oh, it’s all right, you poor lamb! Innocent relaxation and social

research--why _shouldn’t_ I combine them? I did, you know, for quite a

week after that night, too.”

Synthesis always appealed to Gaveston.

“Bladge!” he cried, and his voice rang true. “You are wonderful! I see

all this century in you!”

But just then a voice was heard behind them. General Tremullion was

coming down from the Bezique Gallery with Lady Jordan. He was still

talking professionally.

“A whiff of powder soon puts things right,” he was saying.

Bladge looked surprised.

“You too, General!” she cooed, almost hectically, Gav thought. “You

very nearly shock me, you know.” And with neat furtiveness she offered

him a tiny crystal _tabatière_ encrusted with fire-opals.

“What--what’s this, m’gal?” gasped General Tremullion. Lady Jordan, a

skilled hostess of the _haute monde_, affected to notice nothing.

“But have a whiff, old thing, if it does you good,” answered Bladge

cordially. “It’s the right stuff all right. Straight from Chinatown!”

But the old soldier declined.

“You young people!” he smiled, and passed on.

A piqued frown shadowed Lady Blandula’s brow for an instant.

“These b----y Victorians!” she muttered, rising from the step. “G----d,

it’s too d----d quiet for me here. H----g it, I’m for bed. Night, Gav.”

A _soupçon_ of Peau d’Espagne, and the modern Circe was gone.

* * * * *

Throughout that week-end the amazing pair tested each the other’s

strength, vying from dawn to eve in the audacity of their wit and the

originality of their whimsies. If Lady Blandula resolved to sleep

on the roof, Gaveston asked for his bed to be made on the lawn.

Did Gaveston swim in the river? Lady Blandula was quick to organize

a motor-trip to bathe in the sea! If Lady Blandula danced on the

dinner-table when the wine was brought, Gaveston slid down the great

staircase on a silver tea-tray, whooping and tally-hoing to his heart’s

content.

The very footmen, of whom there were ten, entered into the spirit of

this breathless competition. All through Sunday the stables rang with

“Three to two on Mr. Fooliss!” or “Even bobs on the filly!”

Gav and Bladge--the duet of the day! The thought gave Lady Jordan a

comforting sense of security as she lay awake in bed in the early hours

of Monday morning, listening to the tea-trays racing in the moonlight

down the West terrace steps. Was she not their _entremettrice_ and

_impresaria_? It had cost her years of effort, but it could only be

counted a triumph for her diligence. To improve her status, had

she not diligently taken a house in Chelsea (a part of London she

particularly disliked, having been brought up to believe that it lay

low)? Had she not organized endless concerts there (she was unhappily

tone-deaf)? Had she not brought numberless cubist pictures (her real

taste was for Marcus Stone)? She had.

But now she had achieved! And she fell asleep deliciously, to dream of

living once more on the salubrious heights to the North of the Park, of

buying another Farquharson, of playing _vingt-et-un_ in the evening.

She was secure at last: no post-card of invitation but would evoke

enthusiastic acceptance, no satire but would add to her reputation.

After many years, Lady Jordan was entering the Promised Land.

And by the time of his departure on Monday afternoon (he travelled to

London with Sir Nicholas and the inevitable Miss Tropes) Gaveston knew

that Fate had thrown his lines with Lady Blandula’s. _Coûte que coûte_,

he must get her to Oxford next term! What a challenge of emancipation

to fling at the callowness of the hidebound university! Lady Blandula

Merris! A name to conjure with! Everyone knew it. Everyone knew her

fame and her infame. But only he knew her _au fond_--how mad-a-cap she

was!

Bladge!

CHAPTER XIV

COLOPHON

Hilary term was half-spent, and a chain of translucent May evenings

enwreathed Malmaison Lodge with a beauty more fragrant and Fragonard

than ever. With each successive sundown came a lingering breeze faintly

susurrous in the clumps of lavender that leaned their slenderness

against the honey-laden hollyhocks; nightjars and crickets chaffered

and chattered in the acanthine capitals of the gazebo; and, far

away, silent and argentine above the jagged ridge of Headington, the

midsummer moon spilt magic from her tilted cup.

On such evenings (and they were many) Gaveston and David would lie

almost prone in their deck chairs, now listening enraptured to the

thronging nightingales, now idly tossing their gay-coloured cummerbunds

to startle the encircling flitter-mice. Often enough they would talk,

sometimes both would sit in profound silence, and not seldom, as term

drew on, Gaveston would dictate to his friend his compositions for the

Newdigate Prize Poem (the set subject was “University Reform,” the

couplets heroic), for the Chancellor’s Essay in Latin Prose (it was _De

Complice Oedipi_ this year), for the Disputation in Middle Aramaic,

the impromptu cuneiform inscriptions, for the French epigrams and the

Postlethwaite Allocution, and many another blue riband of scholarship.

Yet sometimes, during these weeks of sultry splendour, a faint _ennui_

seemed almost to overtake Gaveston.

“You’ve sent in my stuff for the Craven?” he asked David one night,

flinging away his rhyming dictionary on to the gazebo steps.

“Yesterday, Gav. And first-rate those iambics were!”

“Well, that’s enough for to-day. Let’s finish the Newdigate to-morrow

after brekker.” He rose. “I’m going down to the post office now.”

Something in Gav’s voice made David feel sure that a climax in his

friend’s already supernal career was hard at hand, and in delighted

wonder he watched him stride towards Oxford across the bee-loud clover

meadows wherein Malmaison Lodge lay demurely perdue.

Gaveston walked apace, and ere long he was breasting the slope of St.

Aldate’s towards the post office and Christ Church. Here he was, and

the lisping telegraph girl (an old friend by now) smiled appreciatively

as he slipped his pencilled form under the grating.

“Press rates?” she asked brightly.

“No, not for this,” answered Gav.

_Penhaligon Knickerbocker Hotel Reno Nevada USA you will find

Oxford in May becoming expect you this day fortnight Peroxic

sails on fourth kisses Gav alone please._

“Is that order all right?” she asked doubtfully.

“Perfectly,” he answered. “It is the first telegram with a postscript.”

She looked at him with questioning surprise.

“Emphasis,” he explained, and came out into St. Aldate’s and turned his

footsteps towards Wallace.

A crisis in the tide of his life always brought Gaveston to Mongo’s

room. He usually came on there from the post office. How soothing still

he found that room with its unchanging and immutable sameness, how

orderly in its permanent untidiness! As he knocked and entered there

were those same young voices laughing (how strange to think that they

were fully a year his junior!), and there, on the same accustomed

hob, crouched the same Mongo. Nowadays there were a few photographs

the more, and the vice-cancellarian mace now occupied the corner

where formerly Mongo’s spokeless umbrella had immemorially leaned,

but otherwise all was as before. But somehow, with a shiver, Gaveston

suddenly felt himself grown old.

“Something wrong, Gav?” asked Mongo, noticing his tremor.

But Gaveston only smiled enigmatically, and Mongo, with quick

perceptiveness, hinted successfully to his other visitors that there

was another common-room for junior members of the college somewhere

about.

“Not overworking, Gav?”

“Well, I don’t know, Mongo. You see----” He stopped as if to collect

his thoughts, and at once Mongo saw that something was seriously wrong.

“I--I think I see, Gav.” The old man laid a hand on his shoulder as

he spoke. “You’ve rushed things a little, haven’t you? Oxford doesn’t

stand that, you know.”

“Youth can stand a lot, Mongo.”

“But you’ve drunk the draught too quickly, Gav.”

“That’s what it is. And now … well, it simply can’t go on.… No lees for

me!” His voice quavered a little.

“You mean you’re going down?”

“This term, Mongo,” he nodded.

“And for good?”

“For good.”

His voice was firm again. He blew his nose. Mongo blew his. Both gulped.

“It’s beastly saying good-bye.…”

“Beastly,” nodded the Dean.

“But still, term’s not over yet. I’ve time for new plans, and I’ll

certainly give a party for Commem. You’ll come, Mongo?”

“Why, of course, Gav.” The Dean was recovering his youthful spirits

again. And Gav too felt happier when he came across the quadrangle

once more. After all, there was a world outside Wallace, and it needed

conquering.…

And the first step?

He was passing Daunchey the bookseller’s window as he wondered. A card

caught his eye.

GENTLEMEN’S LIBRARIES PURCHASED.

It would have to be done. His mind was made up, and he stepped into the

shop. He was welcomed. Old Mr. Daunchey himself hurried forward from

his counting-house, rubbing his hands.

“I want you to buy my books, Daunchey.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll send a man round, sir.”

“Right away, please.”

“Certainly, sir. And if I might suggest it, sir, your name in them

would increase their value. We might even issue a special catalogue.…”

But the thought gave Gaveston pause. He rather shuddered. And he

glanced at the long lines of second- and even third-hand books, ranged

there in penitential rows, drilled into anonymity, like lost dogs

or waifs and strays … each once the darling purchase of some eager

Oxonian, each.… Before his eyes rose the phantasms and sosias of

generation upon dead generation of his predecessors, buyers at first

and sellers at last of books, thronging the air with their insistent

presences, pleading with poor withered fingers for their possessions. A

charnel house of books, a morgue of literature! No! Impossible!

“Perhaps, Daunchey, you’d better not send just yet,” he said quickly.

And partly to assuage the aged bookseller’s disappointment, partly to

ward off that too often told anecdote of how the P … of W … had entered

once to ask for the copy of the (current) _Sporting Times_, Gaveston

ordered two copies of _La Dame aux Camelias_, in its most unexpurgated

form.

“One to myself, Daunchey. And one to Mr. Paunceford, at my address. And

bind them both in that _eau-de-nil_ calf I had before.”

Side by side, he planned, David and he would read them while dawn broke

upon their last dear day as clerks of Oxenford.…

* * * * *

Commemoration Week, as may be expected, did not linger. Lady

Penhaligon, obedient and rejuvenated as ever, arrived from Reno, Nev.,

on the very day before the river-side festivities.

“Such a lonesome trip home, dearest Gav,” she murmured at the station.

“Don’t you like this toque, darling? I got it at New Orleans--oh, you

_should_ have seen the central heating we had there last fall.…”

“But how topping to get you back, Mums,” he said, “and you’re just in

time for to-morrow!”

“But am I late for something to-day, dear?” she asked so wistfully that

her son had to burst out laughing.

“You’re never that, Mums!” he cried, and kissed her.

“I don’t understand it all, Gavvy,” and she smiled in her deliciously

puzzled fashion. “But you always seem to get the last word nowadays.”

Dear Lady Julia! She spoke more truthfully than she knew, more

truthfully than even Gaveston could have foreseen.…

But once at Malmaison Lodge, Gaveston had to rush back to the station

to meet Lady Blandula and Lady Jordan and Uncle Wilkinson who were to

make up the house party.…

* * * * *

Hard on the heels of each day followed another. Between the college

balls which Gav and his mother and Lady Blandula nightly graced,

there seemed scarcely a few fleeting hours for river parties under the

wine-red hawthorns of Islip or Newnham, and almost before anyone had

realized it--the last day of all had come! At last it was there, that

fateful Thursday when Gaveston would have to face the examiners in

Divinity Moderations and place the crown on his academic career.

“You’ll all come to my _viva_, of course,” Gav had said to the

assembled house party at Malmaison Lodge. “David will give you the

tickets. It’s at six o’clock (do be punctual, Mums!)--and it’ll all be

over in time for us to change before dinner here at seven.”

“You’re sure it won’t last too long, Gav darling. You mustn’t tire

yourself,” Lady Penhaligon’s voice was heard above the delighted

murmurs of assent.

“No, mother dear,” Gav laughed, “I’m seeing to that.”

And certainly all felt that, for one who had easily borne off the palm

in all his university contests, this examination could be no more

than a quaint scholastic formality. Else indeed it had been an insult

for the winner of Craven and Brackenbury to be cross-examined in the

lamentably late Greek of Peter and Paul. And everyone looked forward to

the party which was to follow the ordeal. Breakfast was hardly over,

but already they could hear Mrs. Grimaldi, eager to show her mettle,

cluttering busily about her tiny Carolean scullery, and already the

most seductive odours of mayonnaise and cucumber salad were floating

gradually upwards.

Six o’clock came, and before the eyes of friends and family and many

unknown admirers, Gaveston faced his examiners.

“Your papers on the Gospels were excellent, Mr. ffoulis,” said their

spokesman, a former Bishop of Tristan da Cunha obliged to retire for

his toleration of ritualistic practices in Outer Polynesia. “And

on the Acts also. But there is one little point which--hm--I should

like you to elucidate for us. That is--hm--what is your, shall I

say?--authority for the statement that Festus and Felix are the same

person?”

For a moment Gaveston paused, as if thoroughly weighing the

significance of his answer.

“Renan,” he replied firmly. “Ernest Renan. Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

And lo! he was gone before the bewildered examiners had recovered from

the appalling shock. Only the ex-Bishop of Tristan da Cunha, long

inured to the wildest heresies, kept his head. Over the confused sound

of protesting voices his stern tones were only too audible.

“You have failed to satisfy the examiners, Mr. ffoulis.”

[Illustration: “RENAN,” HE REPLIED FIRMLY]

Gaveston ffoulis had failed in Divvers! Was it possible? There was

an uproar. Mongo, seated with the privileged spectators, had

difficulty in preventing Lady Julia from making a personal appeal to

the examiners, and David was similarly engaged with Lady Blandula.

But, meanwhile, Gaveston himself was strolling back to Malmaison Lodge,

with the glow of conscious triumph all over his distinguished features.…

* * * * *

Seven o’clock also came. But it was a desolate company that sate them

down to the toothsome viands and victuals which Mrs. Grimaldi, all

unwitting of the catastrophe, had prepared. Conversation was faltering

in the extreme, and all Mongo’s talk of the successes of Newdigate and

Postlethwaite fell on empty air--who could forget that these triumphs

were all obfuscated by the disaster of that evening. The party, so long

anticipated as the social event of the Oxford year, limped along until

at last the iced melon was removed.

At last Mongo broached the dread topic.

“Gaveston,” he began almost nervously, “of course it’s impossible now,

after--well, after what’s happened. But I should tell you that the

College had empowered me to offer you a fellowship.”

Gaveston bowed across the table in silence.

“You might,” said the aged Dean, “you might, like me, have captured the

secret of unending youth and continued here in Oxford for ever, while

Lent followed Michaelmas, and Michaelmas Trinity, and Trinity Hilary,

and Hilary Lent--eternal among the transitory, my disciple and my

successor. But now.…”

Poor Mongo broke down.… And then Gaveston rose in his place, unable any

longer to keep the party in this unhappy suspense.

“Don’t, Mongo, don’t,” he started. “I owe you all an explanation.

But after all--you might have known.… This was _not_ a failure. This

was _not_ a _débâcle_. This was my greatest day! This was my greatest

triumph!”

His manner grew animated.

“I thought I could no longer continue in Oxford. I thought I had

drained the cup dry. Uncle Wilkinson” (he bowed to his uncle, who had

been unsuccessfully trying to shock Lady Blandula with a tale about

Félix Faure), “Uncle Wilkinson had procured for me from the Mikado,

to whom on occasion he has been useful, the offer of an excellent

educational post in his country. But I have refused it, by cablegram

this morning. Mr. Arundel’s offer on behalf of Wallace College I have

put out of court. No, I remain free, untrammelled. I can never graduate

now.”

“Oh, what _does_ the boy mean, Wilkie? Doesn’t he like the dear

Mikado?” Lady Penhaligon was whispering. “He’s too clever for me,

really.”

“Nonsense, Julia,” answered Uncle Wilkie. “If he can’t pass this

Divvers, egad, he can’t take a degree, y’ know.”

“Don’t you realize?” Gav was continuing, “I have found the secret of

eternal Youth. Summer will follow summer, and each year when the cuckoo

leaves us, I shall go up again for Divvers. But never, never shall I

allow myself to satisfy those examiners. No--year after year that magic

Sesame of ‘Renan, Ernest Renan!’ will keep open for me the portals of

the enchanted palace of Youth.”

Mongo was looking distinctly brighter.

“There are men here in their sixth, their seventh--yes, even their

seventeenth--year. But too late have they realized the potency of

Oxford’s spell. They are fading figures distinguished from the dons

only by their greater futility. They have no status in the university,

no cause to be here. The _genius loci_ demands a _raison d’être_.

Pathetic and spectral, they cannot persuade the callowest undergraduate

that they are of his kind, for between them is fixed a great

gulph--they have passed their examinations, and they wear the snowy

ermine of the Bachelor’s gown.”

“But _I_,” his voice thrilled, “_I_ shall be ever of the company of the

Young, a happy, happy youth, for ever fair, immutable in my sempiternal

adolescence.…”

The guests could no longer contain their emotions. And they felt that

at such a turning-point, Gaveston should be left alone. Two by two they

passed silently out into the garden, Sir Wilkinson with Lady Jordan,

David with Lady Blandula, and Mongo with Lady Penhaligon leaning

heavily upon his arm. (Was an old friend going to be a new step-father,

Gaveston wondered as he found himself alone with his nocturnal

thoughts.)

What was it he had planned for his last dawn in Oxford’s walls? To

pore with David over the tragical history of Armand and Marguerite? In

_eau-de-nil_ calf? But that strangely melancholy experience he would

never know, and, solitary now amid the empty glasses and the crumpled

napkins, he lost himself in memory.…

And before his eyes there passed in hieratic pageantry all the varied

vistas of his life--episodes in the perfume-laden apple-green nursery

at Neuilly, where from earliest infancy, with his mother and his Breton

_nou-nou_, he had played the never stale games of _cache-cache_ and

_chemin-de-fer_ and then the _villes d’eaux_ of Europe, unwithering in

their variegations, Perrier and Apollinaris, Apenta and Hunyadi Janos,

and then his appearance as a witness in the Fünck divorce case (he

could still hear himself boldly rivalling the Judge’s epigrams in a

piping treble), and then his first day as an Oppidan (he had never been

to a preparatory school), and that unique exploit which had resulted

in his leaving Eton, when he and David had locked the drill sergeant

into the pepper-box of the white-walled fives-court, and then long

holidays in Norwegian fjords and Central European Tyrols, and at last

his entry into the dream-broidered City, in a hansom-cab and with dim

chiming bells beckoning, and the view from his rooms over brindled and

exfoliated walls to distant and unreal spires, and, one by one, the

familiar figures of his terms and vacations, confused in wild fandangos

and rigadoons of carnival, the Warden of Rutland and the unspeakable du

Val, Sir Nicholas Gomme and Lord Vivian Cosmo, worthy John Thoms and

the High Personage at Munich.…

With a start Gaveston drew himself up in his chair. How tranquil it all

was around Malmaison Lodge! Only from the Virginy creeper beneath his

window-sill a ragged-robin chirped her tremulous aubade to a distant

willow-warbler invisible among the reeds. The guests had stolen quietly

away to their respective bedrooms, and the short midsummer night had

hurried past as silent and fleet-footed as his own reverie. He rose to

face a new day, a new life.…

The future held surprises still, no doubt, even in the unchanging City

of the spires. But for him it was enough if the delicate rhythms of the

past were beautifully perpetuate.

“What more can Life hold than this?” he asked himself, and looked

eastward from the casement window over the hollyhocks. With beating

veins and mute eyes he gazed out upon a summer sky flushed rosy with

the dawn, and around him the quivering air grew suddenly campanulous.…

_Widdleswick: Harvest Festival, 1921._

_Cardiff: Empire Day, 1922._

* * * * *

MY DISCOVERY OF ENGLAND

A NEW HUMOROUS BOOK

By STEPHEN LEACOCK

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* * * * *

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A CUCKOO IN THE NEST

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* * * * *

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