It was the morning of Commemoration Day and Vane was dressing for the
great ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre, the conferring of honours and
degrees, the placing of the Hall-mark of the University upon those who
had passed its tests and proved themselves to be worthy metal. Over the
end of the bed hung the brand-new bachelor's gown and silken hood,
which, to-day, for the first time, he would be entitled to wear. They
were the outward material symbols of the victory which he had won
against all competitors.
He was looking far back into his school-boy days and recalling the
dreams he had dreamt of the time when, if the Fates were very kind to
him, he would have taken his degree and would be able to walk about in
all the glory of cap and gown and hood as the masters did on Sundays and
Saints' days.
And now it had come to pass. He had taken as good a degree as the best
of them. In an hour or two he would appear capped and gowned and hooded
on the closing scene of his University career. On one side of him would
be the Chancellor and all the great dignitaries of the University; on
the other the great audience--the undergraduates in the upper galleries;
graduates, tutors and fellows, proud fathers and mothers, delighted
sisters and other feminine relatives, including cousins and others,
together with desperately envious younger brothers making the most
earnest resolves to henceforth eschew all youthful dissipations, to
foreswear idleness for ever, and to 'swat' day and night until they too
had achieved this glorious consummation--vows, alas! to be broken ere
the next school term was many days old, and yet, with not a few of them,
to be renewed later on and honestly kept.
He knew that, to use a not altogether inappropriate theatrical simile,
he would be playing a principal part that day. The cheers and the
plaudits which would burst out from the throats of his fellow-students,
and, indeed, from the whole audience, when he came on to doff his cap
and kneel before the Chancellor to take from his hands the honours he
had won, would be given in recognition of the most brilliant degree of
the year.
And _she_, too, would be there with her father and mother, and his
father, all sharing in his triumph, all glorying in his success, in this
splendid fruition of the labours, which, for so many years, they had
watched with such intensely sympathetic interest.
Under any other circumstances this would have meant to him even more
than the mere formal triumph; for though he had worked honestly and
single-heartedly for the prizes of his academic career, he had also
worked for them as an athlete might have striven for his laurels in the
Olympian Games, or a knight of the Age of Chivalry might have fought for
his laurels to lay them at the feet of his lady-love.
Now he had won them--and after all what were they worth? This was not
only to be a day of triumph for him. It was to be a day of hardest
trial and most bitter sacrifice as well; a trial which, as he knew even
now, would strain his moral fibre very nearly to the breaking point. It
was a struggle for which he had been bracing himself ever since that
last conversation which he had had with Enid. From that day to this he
had never clasped her hand or looked into her eyes.
That had been the agreement between them, and also between his father
and her parents. They were not to meet again until he had finished his
university career and taken his degree. That, as they thought, would
give them both time enough to think--to remain faithful, or to think
better of it, as the case might be--and, most important of all for Vane,
to determine by the help of more deliberate thought and added
experience, and by converse with minds older and more deeply versed in
the laws of human nature than his own, whether or not that resolve,
which he had taken when he first discovered that there was a taint of
poison in his blood, should be kept or not.
But now it was all over--although it ought only to have been just
beginning. This day, which ought to have been the brightest of his life,
was, in reality, to be the darkest. The golden gates of the Eden of Love
lay open before him, but, instead of entering them, he must pass by with
eyes averted, and enter instead the sombre portals of his life's
Gethsemane; there to take up his cross and to bear it until the time
came to lay it down by the side of the grave.
He had thought it all out long and earnestly in solitary communion with
his own soul, and during many long and closely-reasoned conversations
with Ernshaw, and the one of the night before had decided him--or it
might be more correct to say that it had completed the sum of the
convictions which had been accumulating in his soul for the last two
years.
The path of duty--duty to her, to himself and to Humanity--lay straight
and plain before him. He had nothing to do with the world now. He had
come to look upon that taint in his blood as a taint akin to that of
leprosy; an inherited curse which forbade him to mix with his kind as
other men did. He must stand aloof, crying "unclean" in his soul if not
with his voice. Henceforth he must be in the world and not of it--and
this, as he thought, he had already proved by his resolve to renounce
definitely and for ever the greatest treasure which the world could give
him, a treasure which had been his so long, that giving it up was like
tearing a part of his own being away with his own hands.
Still, it was all very hard and very bitter. Despite his two years'
preparation, the stress of that last struggle all through the long hours
of the night which should have been filled with brightest dreams of the
morrow, had left him, not only mentally worn out, but even physically
sick. He felt as though the scene which would mark the culminating
triumph of his academic career, the end of his youth and the beginning
of his manhood, was really an ordeal too great, too agonising, to be
faced.
His scout had brought up an ample breakfast, with, of course, many
congratulations on the coming honours of the day; but he had only drunk
some of the coffee and left the food untouched. As he stood in front of
the glass, putting on his collar, his face looked to him more like that
of a man going to execution, than to take the public reward of many a
silent hour of hard study. His hands trembled so that he could hardly
get his necktie into decent shape.
His coffee on the dressing-table. Would a teaspoonful of brandy in it do
him any harm? For two years he had not tasted alcohol in any shape,
though he had kept it in his rooms for his friends. He and Ernshaw, who
was also a rigid teetotaler, had sat with them and seen them drink. He
had smelt the fumes of it in the atmosphere of the room, first with
temptation which he had fought against and overcome in the strength of
the memory of that terrible night in Warwick Gardens. Then the subtle
aroma had become merely a matter of interest to him, a thing to be
studied as a physician might study the symptoms of a disease for which
he has found the cure.
He had seen his friends leave his rooms somewhat the worse for liquor,
and he had reasoned with them afterwards, not priggishly or
sanctimoniously, but just as a man who had had the same weakness and had
overcome it because he thought it necessary to do so, and they had taken
it all very good-humoredly and gone away and done the same thing again a
few nights afterwards, seeming none the worst for it.
But surely now he had conquered the deadly craving. Surely two years of
hard mental study and healthy physical exercise--two years, during which
not a drop of alcohol had passed his lips--must have worked the poison
out of his blood. Henceforth he was entitled to look upon alcohol as a
servant, as a minister to his wants, and not as a master of his
weaknesses.
His mental struggle had so exhausted him that his physical nature craved
for a stimulant, cried out for some support, some new life, new energy,
if even for an hour or so, so imperiously, that his enfeebled mental
stamina had not strength enough left to say "no."
He had got his collar on and his tie tied, and his hands and fingers
were trembling as though he were just recovering from an attack of
malarial fever.
"It can't possibly do me any harm now," he said, as he moved away from
the glass towards the door of his sitting-room. "I've conquered all
that. I haven't the slightest desire for it as drink--I haven't had for
over a year now--I only want it as medicine, as a patient has it from a
doctor. I can't go on without it, I must have something or I shall faint
in the Theatre or do something ridiculous of that sort, and as for
meeting Enid--good heavens, how am I to do that at all! Yes, I think a
couple of teaspoonsful in that coffee will do me far more good than
harm."
He went towards the sideboard on which stood his spirit-case. He
unlocked it and took out the brandy decanter. As he did so the memory of
that other night came back to him, and he smiled. He had conquered now,
and he could afford to smile at those old fears. He took the stopper out
of the decanter and deliberately raised it to his nostrils. No, it was
powerless. The aroma had no more effect upon him than the scent of, say,
_eau de Cologne_ would have had. That night in Warwick Gardens, it had
been like the touch of some evil magician's wand. Then, in an instant,
it had transformed his whole nature; but now his brain remained cool and
calm, and his senses absolutely unmoved. Yes, he had conquered. He
needed a stimulant, merely as an invalid might need a tonic, and he
could take it with just as much safety.
He took the decanter into his bedroom and poured a couple of
teaspoonsful into his coffee, stirred it, lifted the cup, and, after one
single priceless moment's hesitation, put it to his lips and drank it
off.
"Ah, that's better!" he said, as he put the cup down and felt the subtle
glow run like lightning through his veins. "Hallo, who's that? Confound
it, I hope it isn't Ernshaw. I don't want to begin the day with a
lecture on backsliding."
He put the stopper back, went into the sitting-room, and replaced the
decanter in the stand before he said in answer to a knock at his door:
"Come in! Is that you Ernshaw?"
The door opened, and Reginald Garthorne came in.
"No, it's me. That's not quite grammatical, I believe, but it's usual.
Good-morning, Maxwell," he went on, holding out his hand. "I've come
round early for two reasons. In the first place I want to be the first
to congratulate you, and in the second place I want you to give me a
brandy and soda. I got here rather late last night with one or two other
Cambridge men, and one of them took us to a man's rooms in Brazenose,
and we had a rather wet night of it. Not the proper thing, of course,
but excusable just now."
"As for the congratulations, old man," said Maxwell, "thanks for yours
and accept mine for what you've done in the Tripos, and as for the
brandy and soda, well, here you are. Open that cupboard, and you'll find
some soda and glasses."
As he said this, he unlocked the spirit case again, and put the brandy
decanter on the table.
"I've just been having a spoonful myself in my coffee," he went on, with
just a little flash of wonder why he should have said this. "The fact
is, I suppose, I've been overdoing it a bit lately, and that, and the
anxiety of the thing, has rather knocked me up. I felt as nervous as a
freshman going in for his first _viva voce_, when I got up this
morning."
"I don't wonder at it," said Garthorne, helping himself. "You must have
been grinding infernally hard. So have I, for the matter of that,
although, I didn't aspire to a double first. You really do look quite
knocked up. By the way," he continued, looking at Vane with a smile
whose significance he might have seen had it not been for those two
spoonsful of brandy, "I suppose you've quite got over that--well, if
you'll excuse me saying so--that foolishness about inherited alcoholism
and that sort of stuff, and therefore you'll lay all your laurels at the
feet of the fair Enid without a scruple? Of course, you remember that
juvenile hiding you gave me on the "Orient"? Quite romantic, wasn't it?
Well, I must admit that you proved yourself the better boy then, and as
you've taken a double first and I have only got a single, you've proved
yourself the better man as well. Here's to you, Maxwell, won't you join
me? You know you have quite an ordeal to go through to-day, and just one
won't hurt you--do you good, in fact. You look as if you wanted a
bracer."
Vane listened to the tempting words, so kindly and frankly spoken, as he
might have listened to words heard in a dream. All the high resolves
which had shaped themselves with such infinite labour during the past
two years, seemed already to have been made by someone else--a someone
else who was yet himself. He had made them and he was proud of them,
and, of course, he meant to hold to them; but he had conquered that
deadly fear which had held him in chains so long. He was a free man
now, and could do as he liked with his destiny.
His long probation was over, and he had come through it triumphant. He
was to see Enid again that day for the first time for two years. He
would hear her voice offering him the sweetest of all congratulations,
and when it was all over, there would be a little family gathering in
his rooms, just their fathers and themselves, and he would tell them
everything frankly, and they should help him to choose--for after all,
it was only their right, and she, surely, had the best right of all to
be consulted. Meanwhile, now that he had fought and conquered that old
craving for alcohol, there would be no harm, especially on such a
morning as this, in joining Garthorne in just one brandy and soda.
It never struck him how strangely inverted these thoughts were; what an
utter negation of his waking thoughts, as they flashed through his mind
while Garthorne was speaking. They seemed perfectly reasonable to him,
and--so subtle was the miracle wrought by those two spoonsful of
brandy--perfectly honest.
"Well, really, I don't see why I shouldn't," he said, taking up the
decanter and pulling one of the two glasses which Garthorne had put on
the table towards him. "I think I have got over that little weakness
now. At any rate, for the last two years I haven't touched a drop of
anything stronger than coffee, and I've sat here and in other men's
rooms with fellows drinking in an atmosphere, as one might say, full of
drink and tobacco smoke; and except for the smoking--of course I haven't
dropped that--I've never felt the slightest inclination to join them, at
least, after the first month or so--so I think I'm pretty safe now."
"Oh, of course you are!" said Garthorne. "As a matter of fact, you know,
I never thought that there was anything serious in that idea of yours
that you'd inherited the taint from some ancestor of yours. You got
screwed one night for the first time in your life, and it gave you a
fright. But the fact that you've been able to swear off absolutely for
two years, is perfectly clear proof that the craving really existed only
in your own imagination. If it had been real, you couldn't possibly have
done it. Well, here's to us, old man, and to someone else who shall be
nameless just now!"
Vane, in the recklessness of his new confidence, had mixed himself a
pretty stiff dose. As he raised his glass with Garthorne's, something
seemed to drag upon his arm, and something in his soul rose in revolt;
but the old lurking poison was already aflame in his blood. He nodded to
Garthorne and said:
"Thanks, old man. Here's to us and her!"
A few minutes before the words would have seemed blasphemy to him, now
they sounded like an ordinary commonplace. He put the glass to his lips
and emptied it in quick, hungry gulps.