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.”

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. These gay and alert pages are full of wisdom and acuteness, shot through with the author’s high spirits and fun.”--_Punch._

“It is to be hoped that we shall prove Mr. Leacock in the right by buying his latest book, and when our friends have stolen it buying another copy.”--_Evening News._

“I formally declare that ‘My Discovery of England’ is one of the most delightful amusing books I have read for many a day, Mr. Leacock is more than a fellow of infinite jest. He is a man of ideas. He has something to say about pretty nearly everything.”--_Sunday Chronicle._

“What a splendid and healthy thing is a real laughing philosopher. Mr. Leacock is as ‘bracing’ as the sea-side place of John Hassall’s famous poster. His wisdom is always humorous, as his humour is always wise. 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.