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.