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.