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diff --git a/old/50358-0.txt b/old/50358-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index fb24049..0000000 --- a/old/50358-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4871 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Oxford Circus, by Alfred Budd - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Oxford Circus - A Novel of Oxford and Youth - -Author: Alfred Budd - -Editor: Hamish Miles - Raymond Mortimer - -Illustrator: John Kettelwell - -Release Date: October 31, 2015 [EBook #50358] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OXFORD CIRCUS *** - - - - -Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - -THE OXFORD CIRCUS - - - - -[Illustration: “’ULLO, DEARIE!”] - - - - - THE OXFORD CIRCUS - - A NOVEL OF OXFORD AND YOUTH - by the late ALFRED BUDD - - Edited with Memoir but no Portrait by - HAMISH MILES AND - RAYMOND MORTIMER - - ILLUSTRATED BY JOHN KETTELWELL - - JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED - LONDON VIGO STREET W.1. MCMXXII - - _Printed in Great Britain by_ - Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_. - - - - -AUTHOR’S NOTE - - -None of the characters in this book are entirely imaginary. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - CHAP. PAGE - - ALFRED BUDD: A MEMOIR 3 - - BOOK I: VORTEX - - I INTROIT 13 - - II PLINTH 29 - - III TOCCATA AND FUGUE 47 - - IV CIRCEAN 62 - - V GUERRILLA 76 - - VI VOYAGE EN CYTHÈRE 90 - - VII JOSS AND REREDOS 97 - - VIII HALLALI 121 - - BOOK II: APEX - - IX EKLOGOS 137 - - X OPEN DIAPASON 151 - - XI SPATE 164 - - XII FUNAMBULESQUE 181 - - XIII CHAMPAIGN 198 - - XIV COLOPHON 222 - - - - -LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - - - “’Ullo, Dearie!” _Frontis_ - - FACING PAGE - - “Dear Mongo!” 42 - - “Non à tout,” was Gaveston’s answer 134 - - Spiritual wrestling with young Bob Limber 184 - - “Bladge!” came the unanimous cry 214 - - “Renan,” he replied firmly 234 - - - - -THE OXFORD CIRCUS - - - - -Alfred Budd: A Memoir - - -Entrusted with the literary remains of the late Alfred Budd, we -think it fitting to provide the reading public, however briefly and -inadequately, with some particulars of his life. They are, alas, only -too few (Fate saw to that), but they may serve to indicate those forces -of heredity and environment which worked to produce his remarkable -novel, _The Oxford Circus_. - -Alfred, as he was known to his intimates, was himself inclined to -believe that, in some bygone age, a noble ancestor of his had founded -the South Devon sea-side resort of Budleigh Salterton, where one -summer he himself spent a happy fortnight. But our own researches[1] -have disclosed no earlier trace of his family until Hosea Budd appears, -in mid-Victorian days, as a general dealer in the pretty Flintshire -village of Llwynphilly. He prospered, and his only son Albert, soon -after taking Orders in the Church of England, took to wife Megan -Meard, the daughter of a Shropshire corn-factor. The sole issue of -this happy union was a boy, christened Alfred Hosea, after his two -grandfathers--the future author of _The Oxford Circus_. The Meards, it -is interesting to note, boasted a Huguenot origin, and from this strain -perhaps was derived our author’s keen appreciation of the language and -culture of France. - - [1] We should like here to acknowledge the devoted help - afforded us at the Public Records Office by Miss Agatha - Anderleigh, B.Litt., than whom England has no more experienced - genealogist. - -Too delicate by far to be sent to boarding school, Alfred Budd was -educated at home by his father, then and still the perpetual curate -of Widdleswick, Salop. The boy’s mother unfortunately died while he -was still but twelve summers old, but we understand that her influence -lived after her, and that her son paid fitting tribute to her pious -memory in his charming pen-portrait of Lady Julia Penhaligon. - -The lad showed promise. Through the kindness of Sir Pontefract Gribble, -the village Squire, he was enabled to browse in the well-stocked -library of Widdleswick Manor. That he did not waste this splendid -opportunity of reading both widely and wisely, not least in the domain -of the contemporary novel, readers of his own, alas, posthumous, work -of fiction will soon feel confident. - -But how did Mr. Budd come to write the present volume? the reader -may well be tempted to inquire. The circumstances have a melancholy -interest all their own. - -The Rev. Albert Budd had destined his only son to follow him into the -ministry of the Church, and so, at the age of seventeen, the boy (for -he was no more) was sent to Oxford to compete for an open exhibition -at St. Edmund’s Hall. What happened? Perhaps his fragile health had -handicapped him in the stern race; perhaps he had devoted too much -attention to Sir Pontefract’s collection of modern fiction, and hardly -enough to the more apposite writings of Aristotle and Euclid and -Origen. Be that as it may, Alfred was unsuccessful in the examination, -and, after three whole days in the University city, he left Oxford, as -it turned out, for ever. - -But those three days left an indelible impression upon his quick -imagination. - -The leaven worked, and while studying with a view to a second attempt -in the next autumn, he devoted his leisure hours to the composition of -_The Oxford Circus_. His incurable weakness in mathematics, however, -asserted itself more and more during these months, and when the time -came round he did not feel that his chances of success justified a -second visit. The clerical career, then, was closed to him, and he had -perforce to search for other employment. - -His quest was soon rewarded. An advertisement inserted in _The Times_ -newspaper, under the appropriately chosen sobriquet of “Gaveston,” -brought him an offer of work from a famous memory-training institute, -which required the services of a representative in the Far East. -Success seemed well within his grasp, and in due course he sailed from -Cardiff to take up his post in Japan. - -The rest is soon told. - -To the quiet little vicarage at Widdleswick came a few short letters, -bearing strange foreign stamps, and posted at Gibraltar, at Brindisi, -at Port Said, and later handed over to us as his literary executors. -They told, simply and modestly, of his hopes and fears, his ship mates -and their ways, and in one he spoke of his plans for a sequel to _The -Oxford Circus_, itself only completed a very few days before sailing. -But it was not to be: dis, as he himself had said with reference to -his University career, _aliter visum_.… For during the always trying -passage of the Red Sea, poor Alfred disappeared. He supped, but did not -take his place for breakfast. Neither his fellow-passengers nor the -captain nor the crew could throw any light on his whereabouts, and it -was presumed that he had fallen overboard in the darkness. They further -presumed that his fall had been accidental. - -Alfred Budd is dead. His readers will be at one with us in regarding -his loss as a grave one to English letters. He despised coteries and -disliked cliques. He was an honest workman of literature, using none -but sound materials, none but well-established models. For its wit, its -photographic realism and its daring originality, _The Oxford Circus_ -is a first novel of which any publisher might be proud. Its sparkling -epigrams, and its vivid portrayal of life in many different strata -of our modern society, seem almost unexpected from one who lived so -quietly as Mr. Budd. Yet somehow his originality of invention leaves no -room for doubt: Budd was perhaps the first novelist to introduce the -London and North Western Railway station into a novel of Oxford life. -Such a writer had no mean future. - -Here and there, in preparing Alfred’s MSS. for the press, we have -detected discrepancies which, had he lived, he might have adjusted, -subtle touches which he might have amplified, luxuriances which he -might have pruned. In respect to his memory, however, we have let -these stand. If we have done wrong, we look for pardon from those who -remember that, where an old and very deep friendship is concerned, the -task of literary execution is no easy one. - - H. M. - R. M. - - - - -BOOK I - -VORTEX - - - - -THE OXFORD CIRCUS - - - - -CHAPTER I - -INTROIT - - -“But I _must_ have a hansom!” - -Behind the voice there were centuries of the best breeding, but the -tone was perhaps a trifle querulous. From the crowded yard of the -Oxford railway station there came no answer save the hoarse, insistent -cries of porters and the importunate scuffling of cab-touts. - -“Taxi, sir?” - -“’ere y’are, sir. Taxi, sir?” - -But Gaveston ffoulis knew his own mind. - -“No,” he insisted, gazing with something like surprise round the -cab-ranks. “I _must_ have a hansom.” - -“None ’ere, sir,” growled a surly-eyed taxi-driver. - -“Then drive to the centre of the city,” ordered the young man, without -hesitation, “and fetch me one--instantly!” - -Instinctively the driver touched his cap. With a click the flag of his -meter fell in symbolic surrender to this new arrival, and the motor, -a throbbing anachronism, sped fussily away towards those rotund domes -and soaring spires, whence, through the mellow streaming of October -sunlight, came already the distant bombilation of crowding, multisonant -bells.… - -All impatience, Gaveston waited there for his chosen conveyance, and -glanced coldly at the unimaginative battalions of undergraduates -around him, who, callous to all appropriacy, were noisily flinging -themselves and their golf-clubs into humdrum taxicabs. How pitiful, -and how plebeian, was their lack of sensibility! To enter Oxford--the -Oxford of Bacon and Pater, of Newman and Mackenzie--in these mechanical -monstrosities! Rather than that, he had gone afoot. - -“I’d as soon enter Paradise on stilts!” he reflected, and smiled at his -witty conceit.… - -And the smile had not faded from his full, attractive lips, when the -bespoken hansom scampered up, guided by the taxi. Ordering the latter -to collect his multitudinous luggage, he engaged the former to drive -him to his destination. - -“Wallace!” he cried, and leapt lightly into the graceful equipage. - -With hooves gaily a-clatter over cobbles and causeway, the hansom -wended its romantic way through the mazy purlieus which lead the -traveller into the heart of this city that men call Oxford and the -gods call Youth. Gaveston longed for a cockle-shell in his hat, to -symbolize this mystic, dreamed-of wayfaring, and when at long last his -driver reined in before a Gothic gateway darkly overhung by a stalwart, -sky-crowned tower, he knew that his sense of the fitting had in all -sooth been justified. He threw the fare to the jarvey, and crossed the -threshold of his historic college, nodding kindly to the bewhiskered -porter’s obsequious welcome. - -“I must keep this up,” he murmured pensively in the vaulted porch. - -He was now a Wallace man.… - - * * * * * - -Later that evening Gaveston gazed hungrily out over the Wallace -quadrangle from the mullioned windows of the rooms allotted to him. -“Staircase XVII … staircase XVII,” he kept repeating. What a place it -was! Never had his utmost dreams envisaged this romantic reckoning by -stairways. - -And this was Wallace at last! - -His eyes wandered over the beautiful accidents of its profile, -clear-cut against the autumnal sky’s violaceous and crepuscular -glory. With its myriad pointed turrets and ogive windows and frowning -battlements, the college recalled to Gaveston ffoulis’s memory those -vast baronial strongholds of Scotland and Touraine which he dimly -remembered from the interminable travels of his picaresque infancy.… - -“Dear Mums!” he whispered to the listening tree-tops, and a far-away -look bedimmed his eyes. For with the memory of those other days came -back the ever-fascinating, ever-elusive image of his mother, that dear -whisp of frail, ethereal beauty who throughout his waking hours was -scarcely ever absent from the gentle background of his thoughts. And, -remembering her, he let Time slip silently by with fleet, inaudible -steps until---- - -Why! it was nearly eight o’clock! Too late now to dine in Hall--but -what matter? He turned to open the generous hamper which, only that -morning, his mother had chosen for him at Fortnum’s. (How far-off -already seemed the glittering _clinquetis_ of Piccadilly!) And there, -in the quietude of his own room, Gaveston dined simply off a dish of -cold Bombay duck, garnished (a _bon viveur_, he preferred delicacies -that were out of season) with some superb bottled peas. - -Rising from his second _meringue_, Gaveston decided to resume his -reverie, and walked over to the large cheval-glass that occupied an -inglenook formed by a turret--he had ordered the awestruck scout to -take it from its packing-case before any of his sixteen suit-cases were -unlocked. He looked at himself with some satisfaction. Was it so, he -wondered, that Oxford would see him--a svelte, willowy figure, with -fair hair and fair skin and fair eyes, whose every trait bore the -subtle handwriting of race and breeding, and on whose lips played the -most infectious of enigmatic smiles. - -“_Quel hors d’œuvre!_” he exclaimed in involuntary admiration. He was -indeed a masterpiece. - -But what was that? - -_Tap, tap_.… - -Yes, a knock … a visitor already--was it possible? Quickly Gaveston -tiptoed over to the Chappel concert grand which had been despatched -as advance luggage, and in an instant his room was throbbing with the -evanescent, moonlit melancholy of the Chopin nocturne in G-flat minor. -He chose that (it was his mother’s favourite, too) because it always -seemed to fill a room with just that warm sense of welcome and intimacy -which a host should emanate. At the first bars of the _scherzo_ the -knocking was repeated, a little louder. He stopped short. - -“Pray enter!” he called, with an effective half-turn on the stool. - -The door opened. A tall upstanding figure was silhouetted there on the -threshold. - -“Hullo, Gav!” - -“I don’t think I---- Why, David! David! Of all the surprises!” And -Gaveston rose, resplendent with welcome. - -“I heard you were coming up this term, and I----” - -“But, David, I’d no idea you were here!” - -“It’s my second year at Wallace, Gav.” - -“And I never heard!” - -This was splendid! Gaveston stepped back to look at his friend with -whole-hearted pleasure. - -David Paunceford was a figure of the true Hellenic mould, athletic -in every limb and fibre, flaxen of hair, blue of eye, and aquiline -of nose, sane to the finger-tips, and the heir to at least one of -England’s oldest peerages. Add to this that he was an intense admirer -of Gaveston, and who could better approach the ideal of a friend? - -David had entered Eton a year before Gaveston ffoulis, but none -the less they had thenceforward, for several eventful years, been -inseparables. They had been elected to Pop on the same Founder’s Day; -they had been bracketed together for the same prizes, had played the -Wall Game at the self-same wall, and, through many a long afternoon of -drowsy, elm-shadowed cricketing, Agar’s Plough had seen them batting -side by side. Nearly all their uproariously happy holidays they had -spent together, and Gav, of course, was an instant favourite with all -the Paunceford keepers on the Wuthering moors and all the Paunceford -gillies on the island of Eigg. They had received (surest sign of -popularity) the same nickname, and at the last, one cloudy morning -rather before their allotted span of halves, they had left Eton -together, for the same reason but in different cabs. - -“And I’m only a freshman!” laughed Gaveston, closing the piano-lid. -“Why, you’ll have to put me up to everything, David. Come on, take me -for a walker.” He already knew his ’Varsity slang.… - -Donning cap and gown (for the hour grew late), the two friends -descended into the quadrangle, and out into the noisy swirl of Broad -Street. In a moment Gaveston found his imagination kindled by his novel -surroundings, and, with all the enchanting ardour of adolescence, began -to explain to David what Oxford really meant to the world, what ideals -its architecture symbolized, and in what respects its traditions needed -revision; gracefully, too, he sketched his own tremendous projects, -and the methods he planned to achieve them, nor was he slow to advise -on the right way of dealing with fourth-year men, dons, scouts, -clergymen, proctors, shopkeepers and freshmen. - -David listened with astonished admiration on every contour of his -superb profile. - -“What a wonderful chap you are, Gavvy!” he said affectionately. - -“Oh, nothing to what I shall be!” came the laughing answer. Already Gav -could feel the keen Oxford air whetting that wit of his which had been -the fear and admiration of Eton. - -“Oh, how I wish I were clever--really clever, I mean, like you, Gav!” -and David sighed as he marvelled yet again at his friend’s uncanny -perspicacity. - -“But you are, David, without knowing it.” - -“What nonsense! What’s the good of being just a crack cricketer or -a----” - -Gaveston was quick as a flash. - -“Why, then you can catch people out!” he riposted, with a peal of -laughter which, with David’s answering carillon, woke age-long echoes -from the mouldering walls of Queen’s Lane. How magnificent it was just -to be alive and young and in Oxford! - - “‘Midnight and Youth and Love and Italy, - Love in the Land where Love most lovely seems!’” - -he quoted felicitously, and suddenly they emerged on to the glorious -vista of the High Street, bent like a bow and flowing majestically -between the steep cliff-like colleges. His voice hushed before this -imminence of ineluctable beauty, and he went on. - -“Oh, David! Don’t you understand? This is the most miraculous moment of -all! Here one stands in the very heart of one’s Mater Almissima, with -all these crowds about one, and not one of them knows one’s name. And -yet to-morrow--why, one feels like a sky before a sudden dawn!” - -“This is Carfax,” David interrupted. Their progress was checked by the -sauntering couples and the circumambient motor-’buses, and all around -glittered the windows of the tobacconists in all the glamour of their -gaudy seductiveness. - -“One must buy a pipe,” cried Gaveston impulsively. “A pipe is a Man’s -smoke!” - -David nodded, and together in a rhapsody of silence they walked -back past the clangour of Carfax, and, with eyes bemused by the -magic of Time, they gazed upon the scalloped gables and gargoyled -eaves of Brasenose, and upon the storied front of Oriel, enriched -by the sculptor’s art with faint lovely figures of all that is most -rememberable in the city’s studious history, of Emperors and Kings and -the Builders of Empires. In the long, tenebrous quietude of the Turl -they lingered, where, across the empurpled dusk of the narrow street, -the lighted windows of rival colleges blinked lazy, kindly eyes at each -other. And wandering under the pinnacled soar of Exeter Chapel, past -Hertford too, where the winged nudity of cherubim upholds a high-flung -Bridge of Sighs, they drew near the elephantine deities of the Indian -Institute, and thence in the darkling distance, they could see before -them the polychrome of Keble, and beyond, glowing faint and Venetian -beneath the decrescent moon and a myriad plangent stars, the patterned -diaper of the Parks Museum. - -“It is too, too beautiful …” whispered Gaveston, and his voice tailed -away. - -And then, in the pause after his words, came back the recollection of -his mother: _she_ must know, and at once, of his safe advent and his -new-found extremity of happiness. - -“But where is the Post Office?” he asked, and, turning on their tracks, -David led his friend in a silence that was too deep for words to what -he sought. Gaveston looked up with delight at its grim Gothic facade -as they passed through its portal. What a city! Even the post offices -here were beautiful, he reflected, and dim. - -Without hesitation he demanded a telegraph form, and wrote: - - _Lady Penhaligon 99 Half Moon Street Mayfair. The Spires are - still dreaming Gav._ - -He handed it to the girl. She glanced askance at the clock. - -“It’s the last telegram we’re taking to-night,” she said. - -“And the most beautiful, is it not?” added Gav, while she ticked over -the jewelled words with her lamentably workaday pencil. - -“Twelve,” she murmured with the most engaging of lisps. “That will be a -shilling.” - -“Oh, Half Moon _without_ a hyphen, please,” corrected Gaveston -beseechingly. - -“But that’ll make it one and a penny,” she looked up with surprise. - -“Quite,” said Gav conclusively, and paid. And as the two friends -strolled back towards their college, he explained to David how it -had long been a principle with him always to exceed the authorized -allowance of words. - -He was that sort of person. - - - - -CHAPTER II - -PLINTH - - -Next evening, steeped in the puce and russet dusk of an Oxford -twilight, Gaveston sat meditatively enframed in his mullioned window. -It was well-nigh the hour for his first dinner in his college Hall; -already, from the insistent belfries of the remoter colleges the -fateful seven strokes were shattering with their clangorous curfew the -vespertinal peace of the entranced city. - -But his mood was one of delicious _recueillement_. Unlike so many of -his fellow-freshmen, whose _savoir-faire_ was sadly to seek, Gaveston -had donned neither dinner jacket nor tails, but over one shoulder -of his well-cut Norfolk coat had negligently flung a simple but -carefully torn commoner’s gown. He, of all men, could surely face sans -apprehension the ordeal of a first public appearance in Wallace. - -And the Wallace manner? But Gaveston had no need to worry over how best -to acquire the famous manner, at once the jest and paragon of every -cabinet since Balfour’s, of every chancellory from Berlin to Uganda. -No, that far-flung triumph of the collegiate system was a stuff bred in -the very marrow of the ffoulis’s bones. Why, only that morning he had -been obliged to remind the President of the college of that fact. And -he smiled as he recalled the trifling but significant incident--how the -venerable scholar had peered up at him from his pile of matriculation -papers. - -“I … er … liked your essay, Mr. ffoulis,” he had said, with no doubt -the kindliest of intentions, “very much. In fact I almost think … er … -you were made for … er … Wallace.” - -But Gav had replied with caustic courtesy. - -“I almost think Wallace was made for me, sir.” - -And in a few well-chosen phrases he had reminded the President that the -males of his family on the distaff side had matriculated there ever -since the days (he had rightly hesitated to qualify them as spacious) -of Elizabeth, that four of his ancestral portraits were hung upon -the dark[2] oak panelling of the Wallace Hall, that a slender but -conspicuous lancet-window in Wallace Chapel was blazoned with his gules -argent, that---- - - [2] The oak of Wallace Hall is curiously pale (LIT. EXEC.). - -But enough! That was the bell. Gaveston left his window seat, and -slowly crossed the arboreous lawns towards the creeper-clad steps of -that historic Hall. - -Yes, for him alone amid that nervously jostling crowd of freshmen, to -dine in this Hall that had nurtured the rulers and sages of England -down the fairest centuries of her fame, was an experience both homely -and familiar. It was something as easily acceptable as, say, luncheon -in that white-panelled breakfast-room in Half Moon Street, with his -own mother’s dear delightful vaguenesses floating musically across the -rose-laden table. (“Gav dear, if you weren’t so clever, I’d love you so -much more!”--“And if you weren’t so stupid, Mother dearest, I’d love -you so much less!”--He remembered their tirelessly enchanting badinage -over the gold-rimmed coffee cups down long summer afternoons.…) - -For, after all was said and done, the great secret of Wallace was to -be surprised at nothing. And Gaveston never was. It was with him an -instinct (atavistic, he supposed). - -So, even on his first night in Hall, he had finished the four solid -but wholesome courses of the College dinner (“commons” weren’t they -called?) long before any at the freshmen’s table. For him no need to -look about with curiosity or awe, or to gaze with furtive respect at -the High Table, with the berserk figure of the President muttering -its truncated grace, and still less to attempt acquaintance with the -_gauche_ nonentities whom, or “which” as he said to himself with a -quiet smile, chance had set upon his either hand. - -Unduly reserved? No: Gaveston overflowed with the ffoulis charm, that -fastidious and subtle essence which this Hall had savoured so often -during the past four centuries. Even the stocky spectacled youth next -but one on his right could not but sense that. - -“Wonder who that chap is?” Gaveston heard him whisper to his -_vis-à-vis_. - -“I think his name is Foulis,” came the low respectful answer. - -“ffoulis,” corrected Gav silkily, with the gentlest of smiles. And the -incident closed. - -But it was enough to show his quality. And the _mot_ was bruited around -the whole of Wallace that night before Old Tom had boomed and boomed -his hundred strokes and one over the starlit spires and Athenian groves -of the dream-bound colleges.[3] - - [3] i.e., by 9.15 p.m. (LIT. EXEC.) - -Gaveston rose, distressed, but not surprised, at the scout’s omission -to bring red pepper for his savoury. His neighbours, still toying with -the sweet, watched with ill-concealed surprise and some envy the ease -with which he drew up his figure from the awkward constriction of the -long oaken bench, and the slender but masculine grace of his carriage -as he paced alone towards the door. - -Alone he descended the Hall steps into the cool evening air. Through -the fast-gathering dusk the beetling walls flamed distantly with -the fiery Virginia creeper lambent upon their crumbling stone. -Underfoot, the first-fallen leaves of October lisped and whispered in a -soft-stirring night-wind, and overhead a few late rooks were fluttering -darkly from branch to branch. Thus had they fluttered, he reflected, -just so long as the golden light had gushed forth from the high windows -of Wallace Hall, and so would they flutter, ageless and perennial, over -the heads of generations still unweaned and yet unborn. The Wallace -rooks … nothing could affright them, nothing surprise them.… They, too, -had found the secret. - - * * * * * - -Dinner was over, but the night held further possibilities. There was -still the Dean. - -But no one, of course, called him the Dean. - -No one of consequence called him by his own name even. The name -of Archibald Arundel was all but unknown in Oxford. It appeared -occasionally on lecture lists, and sometimes over an article, charged -with learning and grace, in one of the quarterlies. Postmen and -college porters knew it, and at the foot of staircase XXXIV, which -crept spirally up an ivy-clad tower, the surprising legend was still -decipherable, in faint letters of an outworn mode, constant amid the -ever-changing list above and below it-- - - 6. MR. ARUNDEL. - -But Mongo! - -Who didn’t know who Mongo was? Who in Oxford? Who in England? In all -Asia and in all Africa? Who indeed? And Gaveston of course knew that -one ought to call on Mongo well within one’s first week. It was of -prime importance for any Wallace fresher to be known from the first as -a Mongoon--for such was the name given to the brilliant and elegant -group of undergraduates who used Mongo as their confidant and his rooms -as their idling-place. - -And Gav had been careful, that very afternoon, to obtain from David -Paunceford, himself a deservedly popular Mongoon, some essential facts -of this celebrated _cénacle_ and its godfather. - -But how hard they were to come by! - -No one could tell why Archibald Arundel was called Mongo. Even Mongo -did not know. And now, of all his contemporaries who might have been -able to dissipate the obscuring mists of etymology, none were surviving. - -“Men of _my_ year?” Mongo would say, a little sadly, when his freshmen -friends asked about old days at Wallace. “But you’re all men of my -year.” And his strange elusive smile made every one believe him. - -No one knew his age, but the years lay light upon Mongo as dew upon a -rose. His round pink face bore scarcely a wrinkle and certainly not one -crowsfoot. His curly golden locks had just the faintest flecking of -silver about the temples, and his enemies were bitter enough to allege -that these few grey hairs were false. His smile was free and open as a -young boy’s, and his voice seemed hardly to have lost its adolescent -uncertainties for more than a few happy months. - -Every day, wet or fine, Mongo might be seen moving blithely about -Wallace, the college that had known him in its quadrangles as -matriculand and freshman, as fellow and tutor, as junior dean and -Rickaby Lecturer, as acting-bursar and at the last as Dean. - -Often enough he was mistaken for an undergraduate. It may have been -his clothes, with their deceptive air of callowness. Who knows? But -innocent strangers who looked through the albums of college groups -would often point to one constant figure as the quintessential -undergraduate of his period. - -“How typical!” they would comment, pointing to Mongo in the group of -Hilary term, 1843. - -“How typical!” pointing to the, yes, distinctly but temporarily -whiskered Mongo of 1879. - -“How typical!” as they admired the _négligé_ of his flannel “bags” of -1907. - -“Wonder why this young man wasn’t doing his bit,” they would say -querulously when they turned over and found him forming, together with -the aged President and a neutral student from Liberia, the group of -1917. - -Dear Mongo! - -David had warned Gaveston that twenty minutes to eleven was generally -considered the “right” hour of the evening to knock for the first time -at the door of the sempiternal Dean. But for his first visit, modestly -postponed until his second night, Gav was careful of effect. - -He waited until all the divergent clocks of Oxford had heralded the -full three-quarters before he crossed towards the kindly red glow -of the curtained embrasure behind which the recognized Mongoons -were already gathered. Stopping for a moment by the Hall steps, he -rehearsed the intimate smile and the easy hand-wave that would of a -surety ingratiate him with Mongo and the Mongoons on this entry into a -circle where youth and charm and wit were indeed familiar, but Gaveston -ffoulis something new. - -It would do. Spirally he climbed the turret staircase. - -“Come in!” came the welcoming cry of half a dozen eager guests who -responded to his discreet but confident knock. - -He obeyed. - -So _that_ was Mongo! - -The famous don, as usual, was curled like a beautiful cat[4] on the -hob. With soft plump hands he clasped his dilapidated slippers, -his golden head was bowed over his chest, his frayed shirt-sleeves -delightfully visible, his chubby knees showed through the worn flannel -trousers which had looked so smart in the mid-Edwardian groups. - - [4] Other novelists have respectively described this invaluable - character as crouching like an _opossum_, a _satyr_, a - _panther_, or perched like a _canary_, a _vulture_, an _angel_. - A few, less successful, have denied or pretended to ignore his - existence. Mr. Budd has found a singularly happy mean. (LIT. - EXEC.) - -“Dear Mongo!” called Gaveston, picking his way over the outstretched -legs of four fifth-year Mongoons on the shabby sofa. - -Mongo uncurled. - -“Gaveston,” he answered, with a quick amber light in his eyes. -“Welcome, thrice welcome. You all know each other, of course.” And he -waved a vague hand round the circle of the Mongoons. - -There was a silence as Gav sat down beside the others on the sofa. -But he felt no shyness--he even poured out for himself a glass of his -host’s famous barley-water, a drink which the Mongoons for years had -loyally affected to enjoy. And the brilliant conversation resumed its -nightly flow as he held up his glass to the light, sipped it, and lay -back to survey this room which he was at last seeing in all its reality. - -Yes, it was all even as had been foretold him. There they were, the -myriad profile photographs of Mongoons past and present, crowding the -wall space from floor to ceiling, but still (Gav was pleased to notice) -with a few vacant places; and there the serried rows of lendable books; -there, too, the great expanse of writing table stacked shoulder-high -with letters from still-living Mongoons in every embassy, legation and -consulate of the civilized world. - -[Illustration: DEAR MONGO] - -The talk buzzed on around him. How redolent of Wallace it seemed, -virile, hard-hitting and pithy, generous, too, and all-embracing. -Several of the older school of epigrammatists seemed to be of the -party; their rapier wits flashed across the shadowy room. - -“I hear Bill Wallingford’s standing for the Tories in this Yorkshire -election,” some one threw out, apparently at random. - -The world of high politics was obviously a preserve of the Mongoons. - -“Easy enough to stand,” came the lightning reply from some one else in -deep shadow, “it’s to sit that’s the difficulty.” - -“Splendid,” Gav murmured in fine appreciation. He was feeling even more -at home now. Somehow he felt he could show his mettle in this company. -And he did. - -For a time Mongo said little. But at last he turned to his modest guest. - -“I don’t believe I’ve seen you since you were being coached for Eton, -Gaveston. Years and years ago. But you haven’t changed.” It was a long -speech for Mongo, but Gav was awake to its possibilities. Rising, he -faced the crowded Mongoons, his back to the blazing hearth, a memorable -figure. It was obvious that he was about to speak. - -“No, Mongo,” he began, in firm even tones. “Not changed.…” And with all -the exquisite modulations and gestures of a born conversationalist, -he went on. “For beauty is something constant and unchanging, is it -not? Aspects may come and aspects may go, but the essence of beauty is -stable and established, indestructible and indeciduous, in art or in -life, in life or in art, and indeed in both.” - -It was a daring thesis. The ghost of a shudder rose from the most -hardened Mongoons. But the ffoulis charm carried it off, and with -graceful learning he developed his theme. - -“There is fashion in the beauty of women, is there not? Now it is fixed -by Angelo or Angelico, now by Cimabue or Ruysdael, Augustus John or -Augustus Egg--all have their day, but beneath the shifting sands lies -always the eternal lodestone.” - -And without a pause, without a flaw, he kept the even tenour of his -delightful argument, his hearers sitting in enraptured complaisance. -Occasionally from the hob came the subtle encouragements of dear Mongo, -every ten minutes perhaps, or even more seldom after two o’clock had -clanged out over the sleeping roofs of this wonderful city.… - -“Delightful, Gaveston!” - -“Wonderful, Gav!” - -The eager congratulations of the Mongoons still rang gratefully in his -ears as he felt his way down the turret staircase of XXXIV. Only five -hours ago he had climbed it, an unknown potentiality in Wallace: he -descended to find himself a Mongoon and famous. And now, how quiet and -dark lay the quad before him! It seemed almost to be expectant, to be -waiting for something astounding and prodigious to break in upon its -alabaster dream. The dawn? Gaveston wondered as he walked back to his -rooms, or … or…? - -What a night it had been! - -The manner! And Mongo! - -Well and truly had the foundation been laid for the quiet unobtrusive -success of his first term at Wallace. He held high his head. And then, -passing by the groined door of the Old Library, he flung wide his arms -to the stars. - -“Youth!” he cried in the stillness. “Youth! Youth! Youth!” - - - - -CHAPTER III - -TOCCATA AND FUGUE - - -And term was really over then! - -Gaveston could hardly believe it. But yet--it must be: already the -3.43 from Oxford had slid through the pale December sunlight past -Hinksey Halt, Goring-and-Streatley, and Slough (for Windsor). He -had unfolded the still ink-perfumed pages of his _Daily Telegraph_ -only to crumple the paper up in exasperation at the _bourgeois_ -complacency of its intolerable _clichés_, and it lay forgotten in a -corner of the first-class compartment. No, the frore Chiltern Hills -and the willow-shadowed water-meadows had been fitter accompaniment -for the rhythm of his musings, playing as they were upon two months -dappled with such perplexing patterns of sun-warm happiness and frosty -disillusionment.… - -This had been but his first term. But nevertheless, with Mongo’s help, -he had succeeded in getting himself elected to the Union Society -without a single blackball; and after that the other clubs, smaller -and less exclusive, had hastened to net in this remarkable freshman. -Soon no host had felt his party, whether breakfast or cocoa, to be a -real social _éclat_ unless one at least of his guests could enliven -the discussion, whether it turned upon the beauties of Beowulf or -the existence of a Deity, by the apt quotation of Gaveston ffoulis’s -opinion on the point at moot. And Gaveston had soon won a name for -himself, too, by the quiet and unostentatious entertaining he had -done, receiving the nicer sort of undergraduate now in his Wallace -_pied-à-terre_, now in the quaint but distinctive Cadena grill-room; -and his meals were voted by the _cordons bleus_ of the University to be -worthy of the best modern Luculli and Mæcenasses. - -He had made good. - -He lit a plump Turkish cigarette, and lay back to ponder both present -and future. - -Had this Oxford that he loved anything more to give him, he wondered? -Who could tell? Maybe an answer would come from the Babylonian sphinx -whose smoky breath he could now see besmirching the virgin sky. Who -could tell? But, meanwhile, his thoughts could scarcely move beyond the -long-looked for pleasure of once again seeing his mother. She would be -waiting for him, he felt sure, at Paddington, and as the train rushed -thitherwards he let his mind run ahead of it to feast on the exquisite -prospect.… - -Yes, Julia, Lady Penhaligon had played a more urgent and immediate rôle -in her son’s life than is the privilege of most mothers. And she had -her reward. He always chose her hats for her now. - -The only daughter of Sir Piers ffoulis, one of the last of the -English statesmen, she had been married when but twenty-nine to a -famous explorer of the Arctic Seas. An altogether unexpected thawing -of the Great Krioquhkho pack-ice, which soon after the wedding he -went to survey, brought him back to England a year before his return -was anticipated, and he found himself obliged to divorce poor Julia -directly after, and indeed on account of, her son’s birth. - -But she had drawn consolation from the boy’s eyes, which were already -remarkable, and had determined that at all costs _he_ should be -beautiful and happy. - -“And you’ve succeeded, mother dear,” he would often tell her in a burst -of grateful confidence. - -Her love, she resolved, would be recompense enough for the cruelty of -his fate. She would remain young, no matter what the expense (and it -was great), to keep him company, and in the meantime she remarried. -But, as the autumn came remorselessly round, she was once more -divorced. (Gaveston could still remember her tears when she came up -to the night-nursery to tell him how absurdly unreasonable the King’s -Proctor had threatened to be that time.…) Then for quite a considerable -period she lived in singleness, but, just before Gav was going to Eton, -a Baronet had proposed to her. He was old. But, as the precocious boy -pointed out, the title was older. And so Mrs. Fünck, as Mums then was, -had accepted Sir Evan Penhaligon. - -Of Gaveston the baronet was as fond as of the mother, perhaps -fonder, and there had been long amazing holidays for the boy in his -step-father’s house. It was one of the smallest houses in Mayfair, -but, as Gav was fond of saying to his less fortunate friends, that was -better than the largest in West Kensington. And he remembered---- - - * * * * * - -But there! That was Ealing! And a moment later the train was slowing -down as it curved into Paddington. - -And yes! His happiness was complete! He found his mother furrily -ensconced in the deep-seated mauve Rolls-Royce. - -“I’ve come all, yes, all the way to meet you, Gav,” she whispered -between her kisses. “And such a long way it’s been. Why ever don’t we -live in--is it Bayswaters they call it? So near this, isn’t it?” - -“As absurd as ever, mother, and younger I’m certain.” He thought he had -never seen his mother radiant with so ethereal a beauty. “You pet,” he -went on, taking her hand, “I never dreamed of your meeting me.” - -“But what a lovely blue engine they gave your train, dearest,” and she -slipped a cushion in Gaveston’s corner. - -Gav nodded to the chauffeur. - -“I’ll drive,” he said, and then quickly: “No, I won’t. Home, Curzon.” - -And he got inside the luxurious _coupé_ beside Lady Penhaligon. For -suddenly he had seen his mother’s sombre eyelids fluttering in that -faint pathetic way they had. How helpless, how pitiful that look was! -And how terribly familiar! It only appeared when her life had reached -one of its great crises. - -The car sped from the station. - -“And now, dearest, you’ll be able to help me,” Gav heard his mother -murmuring as she fumbled in the embossed leather pocket on the door of -the car. He felt sure something had happened. - -“Not again, Mums?” he asked with a gentle but worldly smile. - -“Yes: respondent,” she smiled back. “But, seriously, do you think -black is _really_ necessary?” and she handed him a folded copy of _The -Times_. - -“I must think it over, mother dear,” and he looked down the familiar -column of the paper. - - DIVORCE AND ADMIRALTY - - Dawkins _v._ Dawkins and Smithers. - - Jones _v._ Jones and another (Pt. Hd.). - - Penhaligon _v._ Penhaligon, Rosenbaum, Litovski, du Val, - Spirella, van Houten, Casablanca and Mahmoud Pasha. - -“Next Tuesday, I think they said it was,” said Lady Julia Penhaligon, -“and it’s going to mean a new step-dad for you, Gav. Do you prefer one -nationality to another? They all have their attractions, you know. I -love travelling, though I never went to the Arctic.” - -Gaveston was never a Jingo, but unhesitatingly he answered, -“English.”[5] - - [5] The late Mr. Budd took an active interest in the League of - Nations. (LIT. EXEC.) - -“I suppose you’re right,” she sighed. - -“Yes, Joey Rosenbaum’s certainly the dearest of dears, but so’s his -wife really, and then that would mean another case, and how expensive -things are getting.… I owe Reville thousands as it is.… Oh, Gav,” she -coaxed, “would you mind _mon petit du Val_? He’s so nice at ordering a -dinner--oh, you’d _love_ him.” - -Curzon was opening the door. - -“_Justement comme vous voulez, ma chérie_,” said Gav with courtly grace -as, arm-in-arm, they went up the steps. - -Home again! - - * * * * * - -The first week of Gaveston’s vacation disappeared in a long whirl -of consultations with dressmakers, lawyers, furriers and beauty -specialists, on his mother’s behalf, and, on his own, in visits to -the photographer and tailor. (There was only one Hugh Cecil and Willy -Clarkson, wasn’t there?) Indeed, he hardly found time to have his -things packed up (they were leaving Half Moon Street, of course) or -even to arrange the flowers of a morning. And then, once again, he -found himself at that fateful Paddington, seeing his mother off to -Bournemouth, after the successful pronouncement of the decree, her grey -eyes shining with a new happiness. And suddenly he felt a terrible -loneliness. - -“But I shall only be away three or four weeks, Gav dear,” she had said. -“And I’m always as happy as a bird with Cousin Adolpha----” - -“As a mocking-bird?” Gav had queried laughingly to mask his bitter -disappointment at missing for the first time his mother’s companionship -at the festive season. - -But he had promised to be a good boy, and to treat his dear Uncle -Wilkinson with tact. - -“You’ve such a lot,” she said wistfully, “and anyway it will be nice -for you living in the[6] Albany this cold weather. It _was_ sweet of -him to ask you to stay with him for your holidays.” - - [6] _Sic_ throughout. A more experienced novelist would - doubtless have omitted the “the.” (LIT. EXEC.) - -And then the train had pulled out in its ruthless way, almost before -he had time to find his way to the door of the reserved Pullman -saloon-car, heavy with the scent of the winter-roses he had ordered to -be sent from Selfridge’s that morning. How poignant was their sweetness -amid the smoke and bustle and jangle of the mammoth terminus! - -Gaveston drove the Panhard (it was his favourite) back to Half Moon -Street. Already the posters of the evening papers were sprawling in the -muddy gutters and flapping in the rain-soaked wind---- - - PENHALIGON CASE: RESULT. - -How sad it all really was, he reflected, beneath the glittering -surface, and how nerve-racking those months between the _nisi_ and the -absolute. Poor Mums.… Was it rain on the wind-screen that dimmed his -view of the lighted street as the great Panhard purred down the Edgware -Road, or.… He brushed his eyes, and opened the throttle wider.… - -He picked up his suit-cases at the house, and drove round without delay -to the Albany Yard. - -“Sir Wilkinson ffoulis?” he asked the porter. - -“C, sir,” came the answer, “on your right, if you please.” - -And C, The Albany, was to be Gav’s address for the rest of this -vacation. - -Gaveston took care only to meet people of whose peculiarness and -uniquity he could be proud, and so he always felt a properly nepotal -affection for Sir Wilkinson ffoulis, K.V.O. A diplomat, now retired, he -had been _en poste_ at Reijkavik, Quito, Adis Ababa, and Cayenne. “And -after that,” the veteran would say, casting up his eyes to the Angelica -Kauffmann ceiling of the St. James’s Club, “I was fifteen months _en -disponibilité_, pressin’ my claims to a chargéship in Pesth or Janeiro. -They offered me Albania. I preferred the Albany.” - -Wilkinson had his share of the dry ffoulis wit. - -“Milord receives,” said Hekla, the Icelandic valet. He showed Gaveston -into a room decorated exclusively with signed photographs of the -various royalties whom Sir Wilkinson had been able to serve in those -directions for which he had an all but unique talent, and which formed -a very frequent subject for his reflection and reminiscence. - -“Glad you’ve come, m’ boy,” he said heartily. “I think you’ll be -comfortable here while your mother’s away, and, gad! you’ll brighten up -the old place for me. I feel so _diablement disoccupato_, y’ know,” he -went on meditatively, “but I’ll enjoy helpin’ you to find your feet in -town. Don’t suppose you’ve seen much of the green-rooms yet, eh?” - -Gaveston made a deprecating gesture. - -“But look here: there’s a little Spanish gal singin’ at the Col. -just now … remember once the King of the Belgians, the old ’un … the -Ludwigstrasse tried to get hold of her then … ended as a Principessa -… but old Leopold sent me that photograph all the same.” And the old -fellow chuckled. - -Gaveston knew all his uncle’s stories, and only listened at intervals: -they were more interesting like that. - -“Thanks immensely, Uncle Wilkie,” he replied. “Awfully thoughtful of -you. But I want to think things over first.” - -“Young devil…! Want to drive your own wagon, eh?” - -“Shan’t hitch it to a Star, though,” flashed Gaveston. - -“He! he! Good lad! Gad! you’re a ffoulis all right. _Quel garçon!_” and -with a laugh that he had learned from the accounts of those who had -known the Marquess of Steyne, the old rake donned his beaver-hat and -started on his quotidian round of the more exclusive clubs. - -But as he went out of the door he threw Gaveston a latch-key. - -“Catch, m’ boy!” he called to him. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - -CIRCEAN - - -And then, in glowing crowded processional, there came for Gaveston a -marvellous cavalcade of days and nights in the great metropolis of -Empire. - -Through the cheerful, childlike bustle of Yuletide, through the -chilled, sober, resolute days of New Year, and on to the gay bachelor -party which Uncle Wilkinson gave (at Verrey’s, of course) to some of -his old colleagues on Twelfth Night, the great book of London opened -before him, ateem with strange riddles and alembications. - -And what a book! The restless cross-currents of its fantastic -_figurantes_ flickered against the dim background of streets with -cinematographic speed; and the darting limelight of his imagination -would pick out by hazard, here some dark Rembrandtesque intaglio, there -some half-perceived and evanescent torso, pearls from this hitherto -uncharted sea which now he had to plumb with the magic theodolite of -Youth, until at last all the mystery of London should stand revealed to -his ardent gaze, as clear as was the mystery of that other City of his -life, where, dulcet among the listening spires, hovered the plangent, -reverberant bells.… - -And so, armed only with a copy, bound in soft dove-grey leather, of _A -Wanderer in London_, Gav would sally forth from the Albany of a morning -on magnificent explorations of this astounding new world that awaited -his conquest, now threading its equatorial jungles, now penetrating to -its uttermost poles, now standing Cortes-like on the very summit of -Constitution Hill. Until now he had moved only in the circumscribed -orbit of his mother’s Mayfair “set.” But now he could freely climb into -the handy taxicab, or on to the humble, but oh! how instructive ’bus, -and boldly drive whithersoever his daring imagination might suggest. - -“All the way, please, my man,” he would say to the conductors, as to -the manner born, handing always a new florin. “No, keep the change.” He -seldom passed unnoticed. - -Wood Green and Newington Butts were startled on one day by the vision -of this Apollonian creature striding in his proud beauty adown their -dim byways; next day it was the turn of Tulse Hill and Hornsey Rise -to know a second dawn, and then perhaps a sudden light brightened the -lives of the obscure denizens of Poultry. - -His keen eye soon noticed that ’busses had numbers. - -“Really? Really? Is that so?” Uncle Wilkie had asked incredulously as -they sat together in the Albany waiting to see in the New, and, as it -turned out, so eventful, Year.[7] - - [7] This would make the exact date of this interesting incident - December 31st. (LIT. EXEC.) - -“Yes, isn’t it quaint?” nodded Gaveston. “And to-morrow I’m going to -take a Number 1, and the day after that a Number 2, and so on till I -really know my London.” - -And the old rake roared at the lad’s witty caracoling. - -One evening, too, when Gaveston, a trifle tired but still alert in -every faculty, came back from one of these marvellous expeditions, his -uncle greeted him in the Albany colonnade. - -“I can’t believe it. I can’t. It’s beyond belief, m’ boy!” - -“What can _that_ be, uncle?” asked Gaveston with smiling calm. - -“Is it true what they’re saying in the clubs to-day, that you’ve been -across every single bridge in London?” - -“Quite true,” he replied, with deprecating modesty. “And through the -Rotherhithe Tunnel, too,” he added quietly. - -And the old adventurer, whose eyes had gazed upon so many and so -foreign cities, was silent, seeing of a sudden that youth must have its -day nor will be gainsaid. - - * * * * * - -But despite his triumphs, Gaveston was not completely satisfied. What -did it all mean to _him_, this blazing, roaring Babylon? How was it all -to fit into the intricate mosaic of _élan_ and _flair_ and _verve_ that -made up the essential ffoulis. London and Oxford.… Oxford and London.… - -“They seem irreconcilable,” he whispered to himself one evening as he -stood adream by the fountain in Piccadilly Circus, the high tide of -humanity plashing in dusky waves about him. - -But were they? - -And with a touch of elfin phantasy all his own, he interchanged in -his robust imagination the two sculptured monuments of these two -irreconcilable cities, and hey presto!--below the monacal mullions -of Wallace he perceived the ever-tiptoe Eros, aiming his darts -with fatal strategy at the haunters of those mediæval shadows and -destroying in a night an austerity that was the handiwork of unnumbered -centuries--while here, round the transplanted Martyrs’ Memorial the -flower-sellers would cease their raucousness, and the struggling -painted crowd their Neronian debauchery, awed into silence before the -steepling and pinnacled emblem of Oxford’s and England’s rejection of -the Scarlet Woman of the Seven Hills.… - -“Vi’lets, sweet vi’lets … all fresh.… Buy a bunch, kind sir!” the -shrill cockney voice had floated to his ears from the pedestal behind -him. - -He threw the poor wretch a sovereign, and hurried over to Regent -Street, fearing the embarrassing cordiality of her humble gratitude.[8] - - [8] Mr. Budd, when asked to record in his friends’ albums his - favourite proverb, would always inscribe _Noblesse Oblige_. - (LIT. EXEC.) - -But how was this evening, almost his last before term began, to be -spent? He pondered a moment as he stood in the flare of the shouting -sky-signs. What a day of rich and original imaginings it had been! -Heedless of time, he had wandered round and round the Surrey Docks, -watching the ships and the men of the ships. All afternoon his thoughts -had set sail with those Levantine brigantines as they fared forth -in silence down to the open sea, and had followed them to strange -and hidden ports of Cathay and Samarkand; and in imagination he had -charged their cavernous holds with who knows what marvellous cargoes of -spikenard and julep, attar and bergamot, and with what heavy carven -chests of teak and sandalwood, stuffed with the blinding glory of onyx -and sard, of beryl and jacinth and peridot, of the girasole shining -green in the sun and red in the moon, and the zircon which drives -mad the Lybian antelopes that look upon it in the spring, of the wan -crapawd, the cabochon and the obsidian, and with carcanets of sapphire -and torques of purest spinel.… - -But was it safe thus to give free rein to his luxuriant imaginings? -Might he not be too utterly original, too bizarre, thus wandering down -paths of uncharted beauty until perhaps he find himself bemused and -bemazed, lost to the kindly familiar realms of real life? - -He might, he reflected, he might. And he remembered how his mother had -only taught him the simpler fairy tales, lest the magic lore should -pervade his amazing imagination _too_ fully, and make of his very -precocity a snare and a gin. - -And as he paced the crescent curve of Regent Street in these musings, -he reached the Café Régale. - - * * * * * - -The Café Régale! - -To this door, of all doors, had Providence guided him that evening. -Here surely was the answer that he sought from the mighty Sphinx! Here, -if anywhere, might he find that perfect and subtle synthesis of Oxford -and London, of London and Oxford! - -Of the Café and its inhabitants, and of its paramount significance in -the life of our time, Gaveston had already heard much, and read more. -Monty Wytham, most _rusé_ of the Mongoons, had lowered his voice in -speaking of it one night in far-away Wallace. Bold must the spirit be, -and heedless of bourgeois condemnation, to actually affront so perilous -a haunt after dark! - -But Gaveston, though alone, was undismayed. Undeceived, true Londoner -that he was, by the golden word - - NICHOLS - -emblazoned above the portal, he gave a determined push to the fateful -revolving door. As its well-oiled sweep threw him into the fantastical -lobby within, he reflected how often these very panels had revolved -before the push of hands famous the world over for their cunning over -marble and bronze, for the eloquent pens they wielded, for their -intricate mastery of brush and easel, and of hands celebrated alas! -only for their own manicured and expensive selves. How often indeed! -But now it had known a new revolution! And he laughed at the unspoken -quip as he walked towards the smoke-room. - -Gaveston pushed open the innermost swing-door, fully realizing that -this was perhaps his most crucial entry since that first evening in -Mongo’s room, and for a moment he stood there, not indeed in any -uncertainty, but in conscious appraisal of the spectacle that met his -eyes. - -A spectacle indeed! - -For lo! athwart a score of rococo mirrored walls the dazzling lights -answered each other in optical strophe and antistrophe. Incredible -perspectives of painted ceiling with moulded garlands of gold, were -upheld by bowed, silent caryatides, about whose bare gilded breasts -hovered voluptuously the dim blue smoke of scented cigarettes that rose -incense-like from the worshippers of pleasure below. From the thronged -marble tables rose the heady, deadly fumes of wine and drugs--a mad -clinking of glasses--a fierce rattling of hypodermic syringes--a Babel -of tongues--wild hectic laughter--an undercurrent of whispers of dark -intrigue and nameless insinuation--and there was a stall where French -novels were openly for sale.… - -“La Bohème!” he said instinctively to himself. But here reality had -surely out-Murgered Puccini or Balfe. - -From one plush-covered seat, where half-a-dozen picturesque figures -sat, men and women jowl by cheek, he caught the wildest of foreign -oaths. - -“_Certes!_” - -“_Pardi!_” - -“_Je m’en f … de ce b … là!_” - -“_N … d’un n…!_” - -And many another untranslatable audacity that could only be conveyed by -the vitriolic pen of a Zola or a Willy. - -From a table on his right came sinister mutterings. - -“But how _can_ he quit the country, Bill? D’you think there aren’t any -’tecs at Dover Harbour?” - -“My G----! Harry, I wish I’d never touched the stuff!” - -Dope, no doubt, reflected Gaveston sadly. - -Farther over, near a respectable-looking door labelled GRILL ROOM, sat -a group of hideous old satyrs playing, apparently, dominoes. But the -deep ravages of time and disease had seared their absinthe-rotted faces -too terribly for Gaveston to be deceived by their pretence of childish -pastime, and he tiptoed discreetly over to see whether he might not -catch some of their conversation, muffled though it obviously was. - -Yes, he could hear the raucous whispering of their broken English. - -“Oh, dere’s a market all right. And so I took seex of ’em at t’ree -t’ousan’ francs--F.O.B., of course.” - -“F.O.B., of course,” nodded his accomplice with a smile, and Gaveston -looked down at the couple, fascinated by their strange redolence of -sin. What vileness, he wondered, were the old traffickers discussing in -their thievish cabalistic slang?[9] - - [9] Mr. Budd’s sense of picturesque detail occasionally led - him astray, though never more than is pardonable in a young - novelist. As a close neighbour of the great industrial North of - England, he would have been deeply interested to know that the - gentlemen he here portrays in a somewhat sinister light are in - reality the London representatives of two of the most prominent - textile houses of Lille, a city which has been wittily (though - not by Mr. Budd) described as the “Manchester of France.” (LIT. - EXEC.) - -But his reflections were broken with an unexpectedness worthy of the -scene. Suddenly he felt a hand touch his shoulder. - -Who could it be? - -He turned. - - - - -CHAPTER V - -GUERRILLA - - -“Why, Monty!” he cried delightedly. - -For, yes, it was Monty Wytham, of all people! The fastest of the -Mongoons! - -“You’re dining here, Gav?” asked the other with easy calm. - -“Why, of course, if you are.” - -“I always dine here.” Monty spoke with a certain solemnity. - -“I’d heard that, Monty, but I didn’t know whether----” - -“No,” smiled Monty, a little sadly. “People never _will_ believe the -worst of me. That’s my tragedy, Gav.” - -“And they never believe the best of me,” said Gaveston. “That’s mine, -you know.” - -“You’ll go down well in the Café, Gav. Your wit is so Gyp-like, _mon -brave_.” - -“Well, oughtn’t we to dine together?” Gav asked. - -“Perhaps we ought: it seems an ideal combination somehow. We might -work out a synthetic creed of the Best and the Worst,” he added over -his shoulder, turning to lead the way towards the dining tables at the -further end of the room. - -“It would pass the evening, at any rate.” - -“And it might amuse Raoul,” said Monty, rather tentatively. - -“Might it?” - -“Possibly. He needs amusing, especially just now, you know. But I -forgot--you don’t know Raoul?” - -“Not from Wallace, is he?” - -“Heavens, no!” and Monty smiled. “Oh, he’s--well, I’ve known him about -the smoke-room for years back.” - -Gaveston could scarcely have borne the tone of superiority in his -friend’s voice had these words been uttered in less unfamiliar -surroundings. But here Monty was evidently a _par excellence habitué_, -and in the frankly Bohemian atmosphere, Gaveston was ready to make -allowances. - -“I must introduce you then.” - -They had come to a corner table where a plump young man of twenty-two -or twenty-three was seated, poring over the gilt-edged price-list.[10] -As the pair stopped in front of him, he slowly raised his crisp, curly -hair, and peered over the top of the card with the characteristic black -beady eyes of a Frenchman. - - [10] Mr. Budd has employed an expressive anglicization of the - customary but hackneyed “menu.” (LIT. EXEC.) - -“An Oxford friend of mine, Raoul,” said Wytham. “Mr. Gaveston ffoulis. -Monsieur Raoul du Val.…” - -A queer prescience made Gaveston refrain from proffering his hand. He -only bowed to the rising figure of Monty’s friend. Somehow that name -seemed familiar … somehow.… Where could he have heard it? Had Uncle -Wilkie got a new story? Or what was it? - -They sat down. A waiter hovered expectant. The _maître d’hôtel_ stood -near by watching them, stroking his beard in his nervousness. Gav’s -personality was compelling in the most unlikely surroundings. - -“This is my friend’s first dinner here, Raoul,” said Monty. “So I’d -better leave it to you. You’re so good at ordering a dinner, you know.” - -And Gaveston remembered. Of course! Of course! Du Val! He saw again his -mother’s eyelids fluttering under the lamps of the flitting Bayswater -streets as the Rolls Royce purred through the foggy December morning -only a few weeks ago. Poor Mums! - -Well, he would say nothing. But he could watch; it was a great -opportunity. Perhaps he had been too filially swift in acquiescing so -easily to his mother’s choice? - -“I must think it out carefully, then,” said du Val with a quick smile -as he resumed his study of the card. - -“Do,” was Gaveston’s neatly ironic reply. - -And meantime, while du Val’s attention roved about the amazing dishes -set forth for his choice, Monty did not hesitate to point out to -Gaveston some few of the famous figures of this new and delirious world -upon which he had now stumbled. - -“That’s Adolphus Jack, of course, and Aaron Einstein further over. And -there’s little Chou-chou Wilkins: such a dear! She always wears those -black earrings since she did in poor Boris Zemstvo after the Victory -Ball--you remember.” - -Gaveston nodded. The ffoulises took pride in their knowledge of things -_mondains_. - -“And behind Jack, who’s that?” - -“Oh, that’s the painter fellow, Tierra del Fuego--you know.” - -Gaveston nodded. He was calm, but it was profoundly moving to a man of -his sensitive social perceptibilities thus to see gathered together -in so small a space so many of the world’s master minds. Yet already -his own personality was making itself felt. From the crowded tables he -could hear murmurs of delighted surprise floating across. - -“_Qui est-ce qui que ça?_” came the gay inquiry of a marvellous -_coquette_ whose wild _capriccii_ had been the _thème_ of every -_boulvardier_ for _maint jour_. - -“_Kolossal! Ach, was für gemütlichkeit!_” came the guttural answer of -her cavalier. - -“_Chout katinka petroushka!!_” muttered a famous Muscovite ikonographer -in open-eyed admiration, and pointed a stubby forefinger towards -Gaveston in his simple _moujik_ manner. - -“Ready yet, Raoul?” asked Monty, raising his voice to be audible above -the veritable Babel of praising tongues. - -“It’s ze fish I’m puzzled about, Monty,” said du Val. “_Ortolans à la -Milanaise_ are excellent here, but isn’t it just a shade early in the -year to get zem at zeir best? A fisherman at Capri told me once that -before February zey.…” - -But Gaveston did not listen to what the fisherman had said. This -was enough for him. All he knew was that his mother simply hated -_ortolans à la Milanaise_. (“So cloying, Gav dearest,” he remembered -her wistful expression when he had suggested them once in Monte--or -was it Mentone--and how the scented wind from the terrace had stirred -his golden locks: he couldn’t have been more than four at the time.) -No, this must be the test for Raoul du Val. If the fellow were really -in love with poor Mums, he could not possibly eat _ortolans à la -Milanaise_. And with stepfathers, reflected Gav, one cannot be too -careful. - -“Well, let Gaveston decide,” said Monty, and there was a moment of -pregnant silence. - -Gaveston smiled at his companions. - -“Do you like them, Monsieur du Val?” he asked, with every appearance of -disinterestedness. - -“Passionately, Monsieur ffoulis,” replied the Frenchman. - -“I,” said Gaveston, “cannot eat them.” And after a pause he added, -simply, “My mother hates them.” - -Du Val looked surprised. - -“But I zink we’ll risk zem, all ze same,” he said, and gave his order -to the waiter. - -Instantly Gaveston beckoned to the _maître d’hôtel_. - -“Two telegraph forms and a sheet of carbon paper,” he ordered, with -quiet, determined voice. - -“Certainly, sir.” - -They were brought. - -“You excuse me a moment,” said Gaveston, and, adjusting the carbon with -his own hands, scribbled a few lines with his gold-mounted pencil. - -“Take this,” he said to the _maître d’hôtel_. “See that it’s sent off -at once. Eighteen words--that’ll be one and sixpence. You can keep the -change.” He handed him the topmost form, and the borrowed carbon paper, -and folding up the duplicate placed it in his breast pocket. - -“And now let us proceed with the feast,” he said brightly, as the -waiter set out the _hors d’œuvres_ on the table. - -The feast proceeded. The fate-laden _ortolans_ appeared in due course, -and disappeared. Du Val was delighted with them, and invoked curses -upon the foreboding Capriote, but Gaveston contented himself filially -with a simple dish of cod. Whilst the party were dallying over the -delicious _croûte-au-pot_ which du Val had chosen as a savoury, a -broad-shouldered attendant struggled painfully up to their corner, now -the cynosure of every eye,[11] bearing the marble top of a table. - - [11] The phrase is borrowed from the writings of J. Milton - (1608-1674). (LIT. EXEC.) - -“For you, sir,” he gasped to Gaveston, who looked up with that -indefinable air of one long bred to face the adulations of the public. -The fellow held the table-top mirror-wise to the young man. - -What was his delight to see pencilled upon it three altogether -admirable drawings of himself, profile, full-face and abstract, and -signed each, with a few words of homage, by an artist whose slightest -brushstroke was law. A simple, but touching, tribute. - -“More here, sir,” said another waiter, who bore manfully an even larger -marble slab. - -Gaveston leaned forward. Yes, it was gratifying. Two poems were -pencilled upon it, addressed to the beautiful stranger in the midst, a -ballade by a poet whose name had been on every lip full thirty years -agone, the other a _vers libre_, by one whose fame and fortune are safe -for full thirty years to come. - -Turning, Gaveston smiled and waved a kindly gesture of gratitude to -his admirers, and calmly stirred his coffee. The waiter bore off his -precious burdens to the cloak-room. - -“You must have them packed up and sent down to Lady Penhaligon,” -laughed Monty. - -Du Val started. - -“Lady Penhaligon!” he cried hoarsely, “Lady Penhaligon? And what may -she be to you, sir?” - -A scene seemed inevitable, but the ffoulis tact came to save the -terrifying situation. - -“My mother, sir,” Gaveston answered with quiet dignity. “My mother,” he -repeated. - -Monty’s laugh had frozen when he grasped the position. - -“Then you … you … you are my stepson-to-be?” gasped the fortunate one -of seven potentials. - -“Keep calm, sir, I beg,” said Gaveston sternly. “Let us have no scenes -in so public a place.” - -“But you are, aren’t you?” - -“The relationship is unlikely,” Gav replied, with an oh! how -characteristically faint smile. “My mother almost always follows my -advice. Would you like to see it? Here it is.” - -And drawing from his pocket the duplicate telegram, he passed it to du -Val. - - _Lady Penhaligon Grand Hotel Bournemouth try Spirella instead - Du Val wont do passionately fond Ortolans letter follows Love - Gav._ - -Du Val grew sickly pale. - -“But it is nineteen words, Monsieur ffoulis. You said eighteen,” he -ventured, but he assumed phlegm poorly. - -“Duval counts as one,” replied Gaveston frigidly. - -It was crushing. - -Ortolans … ortolans … the wretched fellow saw his life crashing about -him, here in this gilded, glittering Palace of Pleasure. - -“Ze boat-train,” he muttered faintly as he rose. He rammed a -broad-rimmed sombrero on his head and hurried from the Café. - -“Huh!” said Gaveston, looking at his wrist-watch. “He has still time.” -And with no tremor of emotion he bade the waiter bring another Bronx. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - -VOYAGE EN CYTHÈRE - - -Outside the Café door, hard on midnight, Gaveston stood for a moment -in delicious hesitation. There had, of course, been hours of dizzily -brilliant talk as, one by one, the celebrities of pen and brush and -chisel came forward to be presented. And Gaveston had triumphed, -superbly. Somehow the evening and its experiences had made life more -intricately beautiful, more complex in its manifold possibilities. -Would he go back to the Albany by the Vigo Street entrance? Or would -he rather walk abroad until dawn came, and then spend an hour in the -cold, dim beauty of Covent Garden, watching the great wheeled wains -of cauliflowers passing spectral through the morning mists? It was -a prospect suddenly seductive in this new mood engendered by the -marvellously _fin-de-siècle_ atmosphere of the gilded smoking-room. - -“’ullo, dearie!” he heard a timid quavering voice at his elbow. -“Waitin’ for anybody in partic’lar?” - -He turned quickly. - -And the poor draggled little street-walker turned her starved, painted -cheeks up to him under the hectic lamplight. A thin rain was drizzling -down mercilessly.… A taxicab was cruising slowly along the edge of the -pavement.… The street-lamps went on shining impassively.… The darkened -houses towered above, secretly, ominously.… How long the night.… How -cold the pavement of stone.… - -She laid her hand on his arm, wistfully a little, he thought.… Even -in those world-weary features there was beauty left.… Something of -graciousness and evanescent youth lingered still under the hard Cockney -tang of her voice.… What history cowered beneath that monstrous masque -of maquillage…? - -He would give much to know.… - -But afar off, as from some half-forgotten world, he seemed to hear the -mellow, golden patterning of bells, bells weaving their intricate spell -of beauty about another city than this dark Babel, a City of grave -spires and a curving street and quiet immemorial lanes.… - -“No, _carissima_,” he smiled at her with the true ffoulis charm. “No. -Your body is beautiful. But my soul is beautiful. We can never, never -understand each other.” - -He expected to see this flotsam-flower of London shuffle off into the -Suburran[12] darkness. But she answered: - - [12] Suburban? (LIT. EXEC.). - -“Oh, I say!” and there was petulance in her tone. “Don’t try to come -that over _me_! Soma and psyche indeed! D’you think _I_ don’t know my -Plotinus Arbiter? You can’t quote that stuff at this child. D’you read -him too?” - -“Oh, off and on,” Gav replied. - -“Fancy that now! This _is_ a bit of luck. Oh, _we_ shall get on all -right. You know Joseph de Maistre’s essay, of course?” - -“Which?” he asked guardedly. There might be some trap in this. - -“Oh, the Arbiter’s influence on the Transcendentalist poets--you know.” - -“Afraid I haven’t read it,” confessed Gav. - -“You haven’t missed much, _rum-ti-tum_, as Marie Lloyd used to sing, -but I’ll lend it you if you’re keen. I say, you know,” she went -on hurriedly, “I’d a bit o’ luck yesterday. You know that 1642 -edition--Amsterdam? Picked up a copy of that, tooled leather and all -the woodcuts, but the back flyleaf just a bit soiled. Eight quid. -Cheap, wasn’t it?” - -“He’s your favourite author, I suppose?” he ventured. - -“Was once, Mr. Inquisitive. No, I must say I’ve been rather off old Plo -since the Bloomsbury push took him up so strong. I’m on the Hellenic -tack now--Pelester of Chios, you know, and Xanthus the Younger, and the -fragments of the Thracian papyrus that Bötzdorff edited--though I don’t -think much of _his_ gloss, str--th I don’t.” - -“I must show you my Plotinus,” Gav broke in on her gathering -enthusiasm. “It’s a fine copy. 1722, I think.” - -“My G--dn--ss! 1722! Printed at Venice, I s’pose: Palestrine fount -and borders by Manucci.… I know the sort. Bless your innocent heart! -_that’s_ no b----y good! Common as dirt, these are. If _that’s_ all -you know about the Arbiter, you’re no good to me. So ta-ta, _caro -incognito_!” - -She turned angrily on her heel. - -“But here!” he caught her by the sleeve. “Take this, I beg as a -favour--a token to remember our little meeting.” - -Gaveston slipped from his finger the exquisite cameo of Cypriote -turquoise that the old Duchesa da Chianti had bequeathed him, and -quickly but tactfully wrapping it in a ten-pound note, he pressed it -into her little quivering palm.[13] - - [13] See note, page 74. (LIT. EXEC.) - -She disappeared. - -Smiling gently at the amazing variegation of his metropolitan -adventures, Gaveston crossed towards Vigo Street. Already a heartless -shaft of madder light was sullenly annunciating the approach of yet -another aenigmatick day. They had lingered talking a long time out -there. And as he tore off his crumpled white waistcoat with impatient, -smoke-stained fingers, he wondered suddenly about his father. There was -a queer Quixotic strain in him, he felt, that surely did not come from -the ffoulises. - -But he grew tired, and, drawing the too transparent dimity curtains -tighter against the dawn, he leapt into bed. And through the fitful -dreams that so often attend sunlight sleep, there flitted furtively the -ill-matched figures of his mother and the mysterious wanton, confused -in a sinister identity beyond all possibility of disentanglement. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - -JOSS AND REREDOS - - -Next afternoon, when Gaveston saw the prosaic mass of Paddington loom -up before him, it seemed to his bewitched imagination a sudden gateway -into past centuries of enchantment. The sirens of automobiles sang -discordantly, flags frenetically waved, signals symbolically dropped, -guards swung athletically on to their vans. Gathering daemonic impetus -as it went, the 2.35 moved out Oxfordwards, and Gaveston, leaning back -in the comfortably upholstered first-class compartment, fingered the -unopened copy of the _University Gazette_ which he had chosen from the -bookstall’s alluring variety. - -Now if ever was the moment to face his future, and rough-shape it like -a man! He was alone: Hekla, of course, had seen to that before the -cerise Rochet-Schneider had whirled him to the historic terminus. Good -old Hekla! - -And so his musefulness was undisturbed as he gazed contemplatively out -upon the Thames-beribboned landskip. Afar off he could discern the -glaucous billows of the Chilterns rolling up from the plain, flecked -here and there with leafless hedgery, and the hiemal beech-clumps of -Pruneley and Greatstock Major. In the middle distance, placid and -content, the fickle weathercocks gleamed in the faint blue smoke of -half-a-hundred hidden villages, and in the foreground the flocculent -cumuli were mirrored in the shining expanse of water-meadows, -their erstwhile lushery now o’erflowed by the meandering floods of -Januarytide. Over all drooped a sombre baldacchino of slate-coloured -sky. - -“Gauguin,” he murmured appreciatively. “Pure Gauguin!”[14] - - [14] Mr. Budd enjoys the rare distinction of having spelt this - painter’s name correctly in a first novel. (LIT. EXEC.) - -He looked again. - -“But English,” he went on. “Oh, ludicrously English … most -distressingly English.…” And, first sign of the potent influence which -these London days and London nights had wrought upon his sensibilities, -he jerked down the blind, to shut out the exasperating familiarity of -that fugacious country-side. - -He knew of a certainty that he had not yet exhausted the surprises -prepared for him by Destiny. There had been fairies at his christening -(in St. James’s, Piccadilly). And now the memories of that -unforgettable night at the Régale were drumming in his veins like some -insidious and urgent poison. A new consciousness was dawning upon him, -and he gazed on its unfolding contours, like stout Darien in the -sonnet, in the mute silence of amazement. - -Recovering himself, “New term, new life,” he murmured neatly. And the -train picked up the rhythm of the words as it rolled relentlessly -onwards.… - - * * * * * - -That evening Gaveston sat alone in his room, amusedly aware that in -another Gothic chamber an eager assemblage of Mongoons were gulping -their barley-water in tenterhooked anticipation of his momently -arrival. But far different were his thoughts from what those polished -Philistines would have expected in their hero. - -Sipping in carefully calculated rotation glasses of _crême de cacao_ -and _vodka_ and _mavrodaphne_--somehow the interblend of their hues and -aromas seemed that night to chime in tune with the interplay of his -own emotions--Gaveston was planning the redecoration of his rooms and -his personality. “Each mirrors the other,” he reflected sagaciously. -And a becoming blush illumined his cheeks as he realized how insular -and barbarian his life had been so far, despite that long childhood of -foreign _table d’hôtes_--how English and ingenuous, despite the many -stories long current in Society of his authentic artistic temperament. - -“Myths!” he cried aloud. “Myths!” - -And with a sort of dull despair he thought how poorly read he really -was, how Philistinish the stuff that had so long delighted him--Hope -and Hay, Haggard and Merriman, Doyle and Dell. - -“_Zut!_” as he had heard a voice say in the Régale. - -And what a gallery of pictures was his! He looked round his walls with -eyes very aghast. Those photogravures that had been his pride! _Love -Locked Out_ and _The Laughing Cavalier_ and _Dante’s Meeting With -Beatrice_--Watts--Meissonier--Rossetti. _Quel galère_ indeed.… - -And just at that moment David Paunceford rushed in, his eyes atwinkle, -his Norfolk jacket flying open in his boyish haste to see his friend, -and tell him, pell-mell, of vacation exploits in the Oberland and -glorious skiing races up the Cresta run. For a moment he hardly -realized that his zest was not _à propos_ to Gaveston’s mood. - -“But anyway,” he was saying, “we’ve all planned to go back to -Interlaken next Christmas and we’ve booked our rooms at the Excelsior -and you’ve simply _got_ to come too, Gav--oh! but you can’t imagine how -jolly it all is, that topping glow all over you after a good tumble on -the bob-run!” - -But something in Gaveston’s eye checked his rushing words. - -“We have souls, David Paunceford,” said Gaveston. - -He replenished his own three glasses, and handed David the whisky -decanter. “At least, I have,” he continued. - -There was a pregnant pause. David emptied his tumbler, buttoned up his -jacket, and came down the familiar staircase. With no eyes for the -evasive beauty of the college chapel, its buttresses and architraves -now luteously entwined with wreathes of yellow fog, he crossed the -dusk-filled quadrangle towards Mongo’s lighted window, puzzled a -little.… - - * * * * * - -What days of rich imaginings these were that now came for Gaveston in -this Lenten term! How glad and mad and bad it all was! How crowded -these weeks where bizarrerie vied with bizarrerie and whimsey with -whimsey! - -First there were books to be bought, were there not? Yes, and bound -too in silks and skins marblings fitted to their strangely varying -contents. And from the gloomy recesses of Chaundy and the mediæval -crypts of Gadney, he brought forth sets of Harland and Crackenthorpe, -and all the fascinating chronicles of Sherard and Douglas, Ransome and -Crosland, in whose controversial lore he soon became an adept. His -shelves bent beneath the crowding volumes of Johnson and Davidson and -Dowson and the rarer reprints of the Yellow Book, and soon all the -erudition of the Symonses (John Addington and Arthur), was mastered -by the young neophyte. And at the last, impatient of so much heavy -insularity, he added to his arcana the Oriental canticles of Masoch, -the infamous Lesbia’s archipelagian lyrics, the voluptuous and -untranslatable masterpieces of Maeterlinck and Le Gallienne. - -Assiduously too he collected obscure texts from the Silver Age of -every tongue, and the declining decades of every century yielded him -their rich harvests of perverse and curious fruits. He delighted, -for instance, to pore over the Forty-Seven Books of the Eroticks of -Kottabos the Syracusan. Recumbent upon a score of Liberty cushions, and -meshed in the twining thuriferal fumes of musk and attar and patchouli, -Gaveston would ponder upon the corrupt and fetid beauty of the -Sicilian’s style, so perfect in its diliquescence that it might almost, -he thought, have lain undredged down all these centuries in the green, -aqueous silence of some Mediterranean sea-cavern, encrusted by the -scum of putrescent molluscs, nibbled by creatures that fantastically -goggled, and spawned upon by medusas with transparent tentacular heads. -And he remembered how the unique manuscript had been snatched from the -flames of fire-doomed Alexandria by the monks of Santa Frustrata in -Abyssinia, and lay long concealed in their dove-shaped reliquary of -scented cedar-wood, until ’twas ravished from them at the sword’s point -by a Borgia, who sought it for the hands of a certain courtesan of -Ephesus, and how she, after the fashion of her kind, had bartered it -for sables and mummia to a Jew merchant from Novgorod, and how through -his trafficking it came to the stockaded palace of the Great Cham of -Tartary and thence to the conquering Mpret of Kamschatka. It had later -been published in more accessible form by a Mr. Leonard Smithers. - -But he began to find a terrifying loneliness in his research for the -strange and beautiful. At first, on wet afternoons when his football -or hockeystick could not be brought out from his cupboard, David would -sometimes steal up to Gav’s room, to drink a glass of Russian tea or -smoke a rose-tipped cigarette. But the old intimacy was gone. Always -when he came, David would find the black and silver curtains drawn, and -the room lighted tremulously by seven candles of green aromatic wax -upheld by a Cellinesque Priapus of verdescent bronze. - -“Why should I let daylight in, David?” Gaveston responded to his manly -remonstrances. “It only stifles the imagination.” - -“And fresh air?” queried David with astonishment. - -“Only chills,” came the pointed reply. And Gaveston turned to the -table heaped high with the rarest etchings of Bakst and Barribal and -Beardsley, and resumed his task of passepartouting these sinuous -Salomes and fat-fingered Fanfreluches.… After that, David came no more. - -But one morning, shortly before six, he was hurrying down the -slumberous Woodstock Road, returning from an early bathe at Marston -Ferry. Past him hastened a gaunt figure, spare and ascetic, but -unmistakably distinguished; in the deep earth-bound eyes shone the -glow of an inner fire, and from the wrist dangled a simple rosary of -pearls and a neat scapular of plain design; the lips muttered. In the -uncertain light of the February morning, David had difficulty in -recognizing that once familiar and friendly form. - -But yes! It was! It was! - -“Gaveston!” he cried out, almost involuntarily, so great was his -surprise. “Where on earth are you off to at this time?” - -But Gaveston (for such it was) did not stop. - -“Terce,” he called back over his shoulder. “I’m late.” And through the -morning mists he hurried towards the distant spire of SS. Protus and -Hyacinth. David stood for a moment watching his retreating figure, and -wondering, as was his wont, what new notes were now being tested in the -inexhaustible gamut of Gaveston’s soulstrings. - -Well might he wonder, for apace discovery was following on discovery, -vista too upon vista.… - -Gaveston had been brought up (it was his mother’s pride) a strict -Church of Englander. Lady Penhaligon, although no bigot, had seen -to that, and Sunday after Sunday in his earlier childhood they had -punctually repaired to St. George’s, Hanover Square (it held so many -poignant associations for her, she always wept a little when the solemn -banns were read). And during their foreign journeyings, too, they had -always sought out the Anglican places of worship with which the nicer -towns of the Continent are so liberally endowed. All four Anglican -churches at Cannes knew them well; together they had enjoyed the -Christmas sermons of the chaplains at Siena and Seville and Shepheard’s -Hotel; and Gav indeed had been confirmed in the Hôtel Ritz-Carlton at -Trouville by the Bishop of North-Western Europe. Small wonder, then, if -he had almost instinctively come to regard religion as a Sunday habit -of the English, like Yorkshire pudding or cold supper. But now the -Establishment in its wider aspects had dawned upon his receptive soul. -The assistant sacristan of SS. Protus and Hyacinth smiled companionably -to him as he passed into the dim doorway. - -“Tallis in G to-morrow, Mr. ffoulis,” he said. - -“Splendid,” said Gav. “I shan’t fail you.” - -And, murmuring a few decades to St. Gilbert of Sempringham and Blessed -Thomas Plumtree, whose _festas_ fell during that octave, he reached his -accustomed _prie-dieu_.… - - * * * * * - -How delightful these early mornings were! After long vigils of sombre -brooding over the invaluable histories of Messrs. H. Jackson and -Muddiman, how champagne-like was the crisp dry air of an Oxford dawn -as he hurried out the Woodstock Road! How infinitely gracious he found -the liturgical rhythms of terce and none after debauching his soul all -night with deep draughts of the fierce decadent prose of Huysmans or -Hichens! - -And then there would be the walk homewards from SS. Protus and Hyacinth -in the flush of full dawn with his undergraduate fellow-worshippers, -as far at any rate as the gates of Keble College. Soon he made close -friends from among the “P. and H. push,” as they were irreverently -nicknamed in the non-ecclesiastical circles of Wallace, and Gaveston -became an active, but never pushing, member of several of the many -societies which, in slightly varying combinations, they formed--the -Athanasian Club, for instance, and the Syro-Chaldean Society, the -O.U.C.U., and the O.S.C.U., and the O.E.C.U., and the In Saecula -Saeculorum. On these walks he got to know dear John Minns, of Keble, -the man who knew all there was to be known about the Eurasian use of -the amice prior to the Tridentine decrees, and good old John Thoms, of -Keble, who had once tracked down a little country church in Suffolk -where, in accordance with an old Gallican rite, the vicar wore a -maniple with its ends cut obliquely! - -What fun it all was! - -There was John Jones too, of Keble, with his huge giglamp spectacles -and fast-thinning hair, famed among the P. and H.’ers as a raconteur, -who, if carefully primed, could sometimes be induced to tell his -glorious story of the thurifer that simply _would_ not light.… And -Jones it was who, during these amazing weeks, became Gaveston’s -especial friend. - -True, Gav’s Etonian blood never took altogether kindly to John’s -somewhat provincial manners, but erudition, he reflected, is thicker -than etiquette, and the close bonds of common pieties united them. -Together they would wander off to unvernacular and illegal services -in clandestine seminaries and remote rebellious rectories. Together -they would count up the ceremonial points of every church in the -overchurched city; but where John could find but seven, Gaveston was -seldom content with less than nine. Together too they addressed their -every activity to saints that no other Anglicans had ever heard of, -and St. Domenico Theotocopuli and the Bienheureux Stanislas Beulemans -were the familiar patrons of their collegiate activities; whilst buying -flowers, they invoked St. Rose of Lima, and sitting down to a meal they -called upon St. Francis of Borgia to protect them from poisoning; red -letter days were given in their Kalendar to St. Veep and St. Deusdedit, -and for help in composing their tutorial essays they would put up many -a candle to St. John of Beverley; against the danger of madness they -called in friendly unison upon Santa Maria Maddalena degli Pazzi, and -mayhap it was their gladsome veneration of King Charles (the First and -Martyr) that first turned Gaveston’s mind toward the political career -which a twelvemonth later was to startle all Oxford.… - -But somehow the P. and H.’ers did not all seem to take kindly to the -æsthetic side of Gaveston’s remarkable personality. For a ffoulis it -was easy to see life steadily and see it whole, but for a Minns or a -Jones there seemed to be a curious difficulty in reconciling _Dorian -Gray_ with _The Ritual Reason Why_. It was a bagatelle for Gaveston -to haste across the road from a protracted tea-party at Pembroke with -the leading Oxford authority on dalmatics to a gay picnic supper at -Christ Church, where dancing in pyjama costume would be varied with -caviare and liqueurs. Each party would rightly acclaim him as the most -enthusiastic and daring spirit present. - -“He’s superbly High,” the one host would say as he left. - -“He’s so gloriously low, my dears,” the next would proudly whisper. - -And both loved him. - -But an end had to come. As term drew to its close, Gaveston saw that -he had extracted all that either set could give him, and he planned a -glorious symposium of both of his sets for the last day of term. John -Jones warned him, in honest manly fashion, that he was attempting the -impossible. But Gaveston’s mind was made up. - -“No, John,” he argued. “This term must end in glowing -magnificence--benedictionally--come what may. Life, as they say at -Brasenose, must burn with a hard gem-like flame. Besides, it’s an Ember -day.” - -And John was persuaded to distribute the invitations in Keble. - -It was a lunch party. Gaveston spared no pains in arranging the -function; and they were needed, for it had to make its appeal to the -divergent tastes of all his guests. Six of them were to come on from -the Blessing of the Embers at the newly consecrated Uniate Orthodox -chapel, affiliated to the mother-church of SS. Protus and Hyacinth, and -the remaining half-dozen were to join the party after a breakfast-dance -(domino or _poudré_ optional) at the Carlton Club. Gav himself -compromised by attending Wallace chapel, but, a scrupulous host, he -could not trust the Wallace buttery to provide the viands for such a -party. He went in person to Buol’s to order a collation. - -“For one o’clock exactly,” he insisted to the astonished caterer. “And -remember--the Byzantine touch in everything.” - -The famous Swiss remembered. That luncheon was the talk of Oxford for -many a day. - -It deserved its fame. The _décor_ of Gaveston’s room, of course, was a -technical masterpiece that an S. Diaghilev or a B. Dean might well have -envied. The richly figured curtains were closely drawn. The air was -pregnant with frankincense and chypre. The apartment was delicately -illuminated, partly by a score of nightlights floating in tall Venetian -glasses abrim with many-hued liqueurs, partly too by the votive tapers -that always burned before Gav’s private altar of St. Symphorosa and his -veiled image of Astarte Mammifera of the Kabbalists. - -“Wear which you like!” said the charming host to his arriving guests, -giving them their choice of kimono or cowl. Some chose one, others the -other, but his forethought was appreciated by all. - -So too was the rich repast. And when its seven finely modulated courses -were over, Gaveston handed round an exquisite pouncet-box of rather -late Sienese design. Pointing to the two divisions of its elegant -interior, he offered his happy guests their choice. - -“Caramels or _coco_?” he asked with a hospitable gesture, and soon the -party was in the fullest swing. - -When the merriment was at its height, Gaveston rose abruptly -and recited in poignant _tremolo_ tones two litanies of his own -composition, both of haunting beauty and addressed to Satanas Athanatos -and the Blessed Curé d’Ars respectively. The severed heads of vermilion -poppies were thrown lavishly over the recumbent guests, who, chewing -them appreciatively, were soon transformed into new De Quincies. And -suddenly, from a curtained recess, stole out the sombre, blood-curdling -strains of Sibelius’ Vale Triste and Rachmaninov’s Prelude. The eerie -witchcraft of the concealed gramophone, exacerbating their nerves, made -repose intolerable, and soon half the party was afoot, swinging in -frantic rhythms between the voluptuous divans in the mad inebriation of -the dance. - -“_Après nous le déluge!_” cried the host, in a tone that seemed to defy -both Paradise and Limbo, and ecstasy followed ecstasy in orgiastic -sequence. - -At last the party dispersed, half fearful perhaps lest some anti-climax -should end the lengthening afternoon. In merry groups the guests went -their ways, to meditative teas in Keble or in Magdalen. - -Gaveston was left alone. - -With a wry smile he looked round the dishevelled room. Yes, it was -over. A phase had been accomplished. It had all been marvellous beyond -words, rich beyond dreams, but still … but still.… Something had always -seemed missing from all the mysticism and all the revelry.… Oh, if only -David had been there to share it all! - -The room was growing darker now. One by one the nightlights were -guttering wearily out in the _crême de menthe_ and the _advokaat_, and -St. Symphorosa herself could hardly be distinguished from Astarte. -The scent of bergamot was grown a little musty, and the divans were -sprinkled with spilt cocaine and melting caramels. - -“Now it must end,” he said firmly. Brusquely he pulled aside the heavy -curtains and flung open the long-rusted windows. For a moment he gazed -out across the quadrangle to where a fretted pinnacle was balancing a -stripling moon. Then he turned to his door. - -“Perkins!” he cried down to the scout’s pantry. “Perkins! Come up and -pack my things at once. I go down to-night.” - -It was a day early. - -But nothing could surprise Perkins now. - - - - -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 - - Second Edition. 5s. net. - - “To be a humorist is a desperate enterprise. Let it be - said at once that Mr. Leacock’s achievement is assured and - triumphant.”--_Morning Post._ - - “Mr. Stephen Leacock is a lucky man. Like Mark Twain and - O. Henry, he can make Englishmen laugh just as hard as - Americans.”--_Times._ - - “This very sagacious and amusing volume. 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It is all delightful - reading.”--_Sunday Times._ - - “Another book in which Professor Stephen Leacock gives free - rein to his humour, which is quite at its best.”--_Westminster - Gazette._ - - “There is a laugh on every page.”--_Daily Sketch._ - - JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD, VIGO ST., W.1. - - * * * * * - - A SCARCE COMMODITY. - - “Humour is a scarce commodity in Noveldom”--_Glasgow Herald._ - - A CUCKOO IN THE NEST - - By BEN TRAVERS - - Author of “The Dippers.” - - Third Edition. 7s. 6d. net. - - “A really funny book, a naturally funny book. One of those - ridiculously funny books that provoke spontaneous laughter like - the rapid recurring barks of a quick firing gun.… It gurgles - and dances and prances with frolicsome fun. It is pure farce - from beginning to end, that is to say from Chapter II. to the - end. The first Chapter must be winked at, the wrapper cremated, - and the rest follows as spontaneously and joyously as a ring of - bells.”--_Winifred Blatchford in the Clarion._ - - “If you want to laugh out loud until your sides ache, read - these adventures. Not only are we given all the joys of a - French farce without a touch of indelicacy or vulgarity, but we - meet a more refreshing crowd of comedians than I have read of - for a long time.”--_S. P. B. Mais in the Daily Express._ - - * * * * * - - THE DIPPERS - - Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net. - - “The Dippers” has just been dramatised - and is now being played by Cyril Maude. - - “A capital farce in which the absurdities are made really - amusing. Mr. Ben Travers is a joker to be thankful for.… His - audacity is justified by his humour.”--_Daily Mail._ - - JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD, VIGO ST., W.1. - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Oxford Circus, by Alfred Budd - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OXFORD CIRCUS *** - -***** This file should be named 50358-0.txt or 50358-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/0/3/5/50358/ - -Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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