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.

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.