CHAPTER V

COMMEMORATION

"Oxford ... the seat of one of the most ancient and celebrated universities in Europe, is situated amid picturesque environs at the confluence of the Cherwell and the Thames.... Oxford is on the whole more attractive than Cambridge to the ordinary visitor.... The best time for a visit is the end of the Summer term.... This period of mingled work and play (the latter predominating) is named _Commemoration_.... It is almost needless to add that an introduction to a 'Don' will greatly add to the visitor's pleasure and profit."

KARL BAEDECKER: "Handbook for Travellers: Great Britain."

Of the weeks that passed between my return to London from Brandon Court and our departure from London to Oxford, I have only the most indistinct recollection. My engagement book earned many honourable scars before I carried it away into my present exile, but for May and the first half of June there appears a black, undecipherable smudge that my memory tells me should represent a long succession of late nights and crowded days. Individual items are blurred out of recognition; my general sense of the period is that I pretended to be preternaturally young, and was punished by being made to feel prematurely old.

It was the busiest part of the London season, and Gladys appeared to receive cards for an average of three balls a night on five nights of the week. I accompanied her everywhere, growing gradually broken to the work and relieved of my more serious responsibilities by the fact that Philip Roden was too busy at the House to waste his nights in a ball-room. We seemed to move in the midst of a stage army, the same few hundred men, women, and dowagers reappearing in an endless march-past. With the advent of the big hotels, hospitality had changed in character since the days when I counted myself a Londoner: there was more of it and it was less hospitable. The rising generation, and more particularly the female portion of it, seemed to have taken matters into its own hands.

Regularly each morning, after a late breakfast, Gladys would set me to write a series of common-form letters: "Dear Mr. Blank," I would say, "My niece and I shall be so pleased if you will dine with us here to-night at 8.30 and go on to Lady Anonym's ball." Then Gladys would bring unknowing guest and unknown hostess into communication. "Can I speak to Lady Anonym?" I would hear her call down the telephone. "Oh, good morning! I say, do you think you could _possibly_ do with another man for your ball to-night? Honest? It _is_ sweet of you. Oh, quite a nice thing--Mr. Incognito Blank, 101, Utopia Chambers, St. James. Thanks, most awfully. Oh no, not _him_, he's the most awful stiff; this is a dear thing. Well, I would have, only he's only just got back to England, he's been shooting big game...."

This was the retail method. In the case of intimate friends, Gladys would be encouraged to send in her own list of desirable invitees. Because I am old-fashioned and unacquainted with English ways, I trust I am not inaccessible to new ideas. I would carry the policy of promiscuity to its logical conclusion. An announcement in the _Times_ with draft _ménu_, name of band and programme of music--even a placard outside Claridge's--would save endless postage and stationery, and could not pack the ball-room tighter than on a dozen occasions I remember. Hostesses who believe that numbers are the soul of hospitality, could be certain beforehand of the success of their efforts; superior young men would continue to remark, "Society gettin' very mixed, what?" exactly as they have done ever since I entered my first ball-room at the age of seventeen. Everybody, in short, would be pleased.

We saw a good deal of Sylvia during those weeks, as for reasons of her own she would frequently drop in at Pont Street and conduct her share of the arrangements over our telephone. Occasionally Gladys would be called in as an accomplice, I would hear "Mr. Aintree's" name added to Lady Anonym's list, and Gladys would remark with fine carelessness, "Oh, just send him the card, if you will; don't bother to say who it comes from." The Seraph may have suspected, but he never had documentary proof of the originating cause of some of his invitations.

In making our arrangements for Commemoration, I decided to take the greater part of my charges to Oxford by road. Robin, of course, was still in residence, and Philip promised to come down by the first possible train. Gladys, Sylvia, the Seraph, and a _pis-aller_ of Robin's named Cynthia Bargrave constituted my flock; we motored quietly down to Henley, where we lunched and chartered a houseboat for the Regatta, and arrived in Oxford with ample time for the three girls to have a comfortable rest before dinner. I made rather a point of this, as they were going to have three very tiring days and would naturally wish to look their best; moreover, I wanted to roam round the town with the Seraph.

Even Oxford, that I thought could never alter, had changed during my years of absence. The little, nameless back-street colleges I would gladly sacrifice to the Destroyer, for they serve no purpose beyond that of breeding proctors, and I know we counted it an indignity to be fined by the scion of a college we had to reach by cab. But the High should have been inviolate; there wanted no new colleges breaking through its immemorial sides.... Univ. men, standing at their lodge gate and looking northward, have told me the High already contains one college in excess.

While the Seraph sought out Robin's rooms in Canterbury, I wandered through the college--guiltily, I admit--looking for traces of a popular outbreak that occurred when a ball took place at Blenheim and House men asked in vain for leave to attend it. In time I came to my own old rooms in Tom, and gazed rather in sorrow than anger at the strange new name painted over the door. Twice my fingers went to the handle, twice I told myself that "Mr. R.F. Davenant" had as much right to privacy as I should have claimed in his place.... I wandered out through Tom Gate, across St. Aldates, and down Brewer Street to those pleasant digs in Micklem Hall, where I once spent an all-too-short twelve months. Then I returned to college, crept furtively back to the old familiar door, knocked, listened, entered....

"R.F. Davenant" was far more civil than I should have been at a like intrusion. He showed me round the rooms, offered me whisky and cigarettes, wanted to know when I had been up, whether I was going to the Gaudy.... We were friends in a minute. I liked his fair, neatly-parted hair and clean, fresh colouring; I liked his Meissonier artist proofs; I liked the way the left back leg of the sofa collapsed unless you underpinned it with a Liddle and Scott. Not a thing was changed but the photographs on the mantelpiece. I walked over and surveyed them critically. Then one of those things happened that convince me an idle Quixotic Providence is watching over my least movements: I was staring at the picture of a girl on horseback when he volunteered the information that it was his sister.

"Your married sister?" I suggested.

"Do you know her?"

He fed me on Common-room tea and quarter-pound wedges of walnut cake. Joyce was coming up for two of the three balls I was attending, coming unprovided with partners to chaperone some girl who had captured her brother's wandering fancy. These elder sisters earn more crowns than they are ever accorded; it seemed that Joyce who trampled on the world would stretch herself out to be trampled on by her heedless only brother. I wonder wherein the secret lies.

"Come and dine," suggested Dick Davenant.

I told him of my own party, and lost no time in working the Cumberland days with his father for all they were worth. What happened to the Seraph I never discovered. As I hurried back to the Randolph for dinner, Robin met me with an apology in advance for the dull evening before me.

"'Fraid you'll have rather a rotten time," he opined. "I wish you had let me find you some old snag or other."

"I shall be all right, Robin," I said.

"There's sure to be bridge _somewhere_. Or look here, what about a roulette-board? Combine business with pleasure--what?"

"I shall be able to amuse myself," I assured him.

Our dinner that night was one of the gayest meals I have eaten; we were all expectant, excited, above our usual form--with the single exception of Philip. If I were a woman, I suppose I should notice these things; as it was I put his silent preoccupation down to overwork. When he approached Robin with other-world gentleness and suggested a stroll up St. Giles after dinner "just to keep me company, old boy," I ought to have suspected something; but it was not till the Seraph, smoking a lonely cigar, murmured something about "_Consul videat ne respublica detrimentum capiat_," that I saw my authority over Gladys was being threatened.

The girls had been despatched for their last mysterious finishing touches, and we had the hall of the Randolph to ourselves.

"What the deuce ought I to do, Seraph?" I asked.

"What _can_ you do?"

"I don't know."

"Why do anything?"

That is the question I always ask myself when I have no definite idea what is expected of me.

"I wish he'd had the consideration to wait till my brother came back," I grumbled.

"These little emotional crises never _do_ wait till we're ready for them, do they?"

"From the fulness of the heart...."

"Oh, pardon me, I was not speaking of myself."

"I thought you were."

The Seraph shook his head at me.

"No, you didn't. You aren't thinking of me, or Gladys, or Philip, or any one but your own self."

I hypnotised a waiter into taking my order for Benedictine.

"No emotional crises have come _my_ way," I protested.

"Something very curious has happened to you since we parted this afternoon."

I accounted for every moment of my time since our arrival in Oxford.

"Why didn't you tell me that before?" he exclaimed when I mentioned my chance meeting with Dick Davenant. "Joyce coming up for the ball? Will you...? No! sorry."

"Will I what?"

"It's no business of mine."

"Why d'you start talking about it, then? Will I what?"

The Seraph knocked the ash off his cigar, finished his coffee, and sat silent. I repeated my question.

"Well...." he hesitated nervously. "Are you going to propose to her to-night?"

"Really, Seraph!"

"You're going to--some time or other...."

"Don't talk nonsense!"

"...I was wondering if it would be to-night."

I felt myself growing rather annoyed and uncomfortable.

"Not very good form to talk like this," I said stiffly. "After all, she's a friend of yours and mine. A joke's all very well...."

"But I'm quite serious!"

"My dear Seraph, d'you appreciate that I've met the girl once--a few weeks ago--and once only since she was a child of five?"

"Oh yes. And do you remember my telling you what was bringing you back to England? Do you remember the impression she made on you that night? If you're going to marry her...."

"Seraph, drop it!"

He withdrew into his shell, and we smoked without speaking until I began to be sorry for snubbing him.

"I didn't mean to be rude," I said apologetically. "But she's a nice girl; I may see her to-night for all I know to the contrary, and this coupling of names.... You see my point?"

The Seraph suddenly developed a nervous, excited earnestness.

"Let me give you a word of advice. If you're going to propose to her--oh, all right; if X. is going to propose to her, he'd better do it now--before the crash comes. There's going to be a very big crash; she's going down under it. If you--if X. proposed now, she might be got out of the way before it's too late. You--X. won't like to see the woman he's going to marry...."

"X. marries her then?" I asked in polite incredulity. "Oh, he should certainly lose no time."

"She may not accept you at once."

"Come and get your coat, Seraph."

"But she will later."

"Come and get your coat," I repeated.

"Ah--you don't believe me--well...."

I gave him my two hands and pulled him out of his chair.

"Can you foretell the future?" I asked with a scepticism worthy of Nigel Rawnsley. "What time shall I breakfast to-morrow? What shall I have for supper to-night? What tie shall I wear next Friday fortnight?"

The Seraph shook his head without answering.

"Very well, then," I said decisively.

"But you don't know either."

Of course he was right.

"I may not know _now_," I said, "but I shall make up my mind in due course, and do whatever I've made up my mind to do--whether it's choosing a tie or...."

"Proposing to Joyce. Exactly. I've never pretended to tell you more than what's in your own mind."

"You talked about the woman X. was going to _marry_, not merely propose to. The last word doesn't lie with X."

"True. But if I know what's passing in Joyce's mind?"

"Does she know herself?"

"No! That's the wonderful thing about a woman's mind, it's so disconnected. She's none of a man's faculty of taking a resolve, seeing it, acting on it.... That's why I said she might not accept you at once."

"You know her mind better than she does?"

As my interest rose, the Seraph became studiedly vague.

"I know nothing," he answered. "I merely suggest the possibility that a woman may form a subconscious resolution and not recognise it as part of her mental stock-in-trade for weeks, months, years.... If you wait for her to recognise it, you may find you come too late; if you come before she recognises it, you may find you've come too early."

I helped him into his coat as the three girls descended the stairs.

"Not a very cheerful prospect for X.," I suggested.

"X. had better help her to recognise her sub-conscious ideas," he answered.

I felt a boy of twenty as we drove down St. Aldates, hurried across Tom Quad, shed our wraps and struggled into the hall. The place was half full already, and the orchestra, with every instrument duplicated and Lorino thundering away at a double grand, had started an opening extra. Youthful stewards, their shirt-fronts crossed with blue and white ribbons of office, hurried to and fro in excessive, callow zeal; bright among the black coats shone the full regimentals of the Bullingdon; while stray followers of Pytchley, Bicester and V.W.H. contributed their colour to the rainbow blaze.

My charges dutifully spilt a drop from their cups in my honour, but at the end of an hour they were free to follow their own various inclinations. There was no sign of Joyce in the ball-room, but I found her at length by the stair-head, gratefully drinking in the fresh air, flushed--or so I fancied--and occasionally passing a hand across eyes that looked tired and strained. I gave her some champagne and led her to her brother's room. Two armchairs that I had purchased in the luxury-loving twenties seemed somehow to have withstood seven undergraduate generations.

"You were quite the last person I expected to find here," I said, after telling her of my meeting with Dick.

"I was quite the last person a lot of people expected to find here," she answered.

"Dick has a lot to be thankful for. So--for that matter--have others."

"Dear old Dick! he has a lot to put up with, if that's what you mean. If he hadn't been a steward, they wouldn't have admitted me. Oh, the staring and the glaring and the pointing and the whispering!"

I now appreciated the reason of the bright eyes and pink cheeks.

"If you _will_ espouse unpopular political causes," I began.

"I'm not complaining! _This_ was nothing to what I've been through in the past. It's all in the day's work. What are you doing in Oxford?"

I helped myself to one of Dick's cigarettes. He kept them just where I used to keep mine. On second thoughts I put it back and ran my hand along the under-side of the mantelpiece to the hidden shelf where I used to keep cigars maturing. Dick had followed my admirable precedent. I commandeered a promising Intimidad, feeling all the while like the ghost of my twenty-year-old self revisiting the haunts of my affection.

"At the moment I met you, I was feeling very old and miserable," I said, when I had told her of the party committed to my charge. "Time was when I counted for something in this place, porters touched their hats to me, I could be certain of an apple in the back of the neck as I walked through the Quad. Now the hall is filled with young kings who know not Joseph. There are not twelve men or maidens who recognise me."

"Perhaps they don't know you."

"That," I said, "is not very helpful."

"I'm sorry. There are about two hundred people in that hall who know me, but only four recognised me. You were one. I'm grateful."

"But what did you expect?"

"I wasn't sure. You came with the enemy."

It was time for me to define my attitude of political isolation. I told her--what was no more than the truth--that I owed no allegiance to king, country, church, or party. I have never been interested in politics, and twenty years' absence from England have made me nothing if not a citizen of the world. I cared nothing for the great franchise question, it was a matter of indifference to me whether the vote was granted or withheld. On the other hand, I have a great love of peace and comfort, and resent any effort to force me into a position of hostility.

"You won't convert me, Joyce," I said. "No more will the Rodens. I refuse to mix myself up in the miserable business. Friends and enemies, indeed! I have no enemies, but as a friend I wish I could persuade you to accept the _fait accompli_. You're up against _force majeure_, you'll have to give in sooner or later. Why not sooner?"

"Why give up at all?"

"You're striking at an immovable body."

"What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable body?"

"Is it an irresistible force?"

"Have you seen Mavis Rawnsley the last few weeks?"

The question was asked with fearless, impudent abruptness.

"I don't know her to speak to," I said. "You remember we caught sight of her that night the Seraph took us to the theatre."

"The night I undertook to convert the idlest man in the northern hemisphere? Yes."

"The night that same idler undertook to re-convert you. I've not seen her since."

"Has her father?"

"You must ask him."

"I will. In fact, I have already. 'Where is Miss Rawnsley? A rumour reaches us as we are going to press....' You'll find it all in this week's _New Militant_, I had such fun writing it."

"What was the rumour?"

"We--ell!" Joyce put her head on one side and pretended to spur her memory. "Some one said Mavis Rawnsley had disappeared. Nothing in that, of course; _you_'ve disappeared before now. Then some one else said she was being held to ransom till her father was converted to the suffrage. That interested me. None of the papers said anything about it; you'd have thought Mr. Rawnsley was making a mystery of it. However, I wanted to know, so I'm asking the question in the leading article. Perhaps he'll write and tell me. Do you love me enough to give me a match?"

I lit her cigarette and talked to her for her soul's good.

"As I say, my law's pretty rusty," I told her in conclusion, "but you may take it as quite certain that the penalty for abduction is rather severe."

"Brutally," Joyce assented with unabated cheerfulness. "But you've got to catch your criminal before you can imprison him."

"Or her."

"And you can't catch without evidence."

I wandered round the room in search of two cushions. I found only one, but women do not need cushions to the same extent as men.

"That's the most banal remark I've ever heard from you," I told her. "There never was a criminal yet that didn't think he'd left no traces, never one that didn't think he was equal to the strain of sitting waiting to be arrested. They all end in the same way, get frightened or become reckless----"

"Which am I?"

"Neither as yet. You'll become reckless, because I don't think you know what fear means."

"Reckless! Me reckless! If I have a glass roof put to the editorial room of the _New Militant_, will you climb up and see my moderating influence at work? If it hadn't been for me, we should have been prosecuted over the first number."

"I suppose that's Mrs. Millington?" I hazarded. An echo of her fiery pamphlets and speeches had reached me during the heyday of the arson and sabotage campaign.

"What's in a name?" Joyce asked sweetly.

"Nothing at all. I agree. You tell me there's _some one_ who has to be restrained. I tell you you'll be arrested the day after your restraining influence is withdrawn...."

Joyce bowed her assent.

"And that will happen when you're invalided home from the front."

Joyce bowed again. "Me that never had a day's illness in my life," I heard her murmur.

"It'll be a new experience, and you'll have it very shortly if I know anything of what a woman looks like when she's overworked, over-worried, over-excited. However fit you may be in other ways, you're man's inferior in physical stamina. For the ordinary fatigues of life...."

"But this wasn't!" The interruption came quickly in a tone that had lost its early banter. "Elsie's case comes on at the end of this week. I've been with her, I didn't want to come to-night, but she made me--so as not to disappoint Dick. It's not very pleasant to sit watching any one going through.... However, don't let's talk about it. You were giving me good advice. I love good advice. It's cheap...."

"And so very filling? I'll give no more."

"Don't stop, it's a wonderful index. As long as people give me good advice, I know I need never trouble to ask them for anything more."

I weighed the remark rather deliberately.

"You were nearer being spiteful then than I've ever heard you," I said.

"But wasn't it true? The only three people I can depend on not to give me good advice are Elsie, Dick and the Seraph."

"The only three who'll give you anything more?"

"Among the non-politicals. I've got politicals who'd go through fire and water for me," she declared proudly.

"I can believe it. But only those three among the rest?"

"Those three." She sat looking me in the eyes for a moment, then a mischievous smile of commiseration broke over her face. "My friend, you're not suggesting _yourself_?"

"I'm waiting to be asked."

"It would be waste of time. You've not been living your own sinful selfish life all these years for nothing. If a crash ever came--it's kindly meant, but I should have to put you under instruction for six months before I could be certain of you."

"You won't get six months."

"Then it's hardly worth starting, is it? In any case we shall win without needing to call in outside help. What about getting back to the ball-room?"

I exhibited my unfinished cigar.

"When you're tired of oakum and a plank bed," I began....

"Caught, tried _and_ condemned. If you want to be useful, you musn't leave it as late as that."

"The sooner the better."

"I'll come as soon as there's a warrant out."

"Promise?"

"Faithfully. But there won't be any warrant if the cause succeeds."

"I pray you'll fail," was my fervent answer.

Joyce threw her cigarette petulantly into the fireplace.

"You've spoilt _every_thing by that!"

"My help was offered to you, not to your ridiculous cause."

"We can't be separated."

"Will you bet?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"Anything you like!"

She sprang up and faced me with the light of battle in her eyes. The flush had come back to her cheeks, her lips were parted, and the rope of pearls round her neck rose and fell with her quick, excited breathing. I shall not easily forget the picture she presented at that moment. The room was lit by a single central globe, and against the background of dark oak panels her black dress was almost invisible. Standing outside the white circle of light, her slim fragile body was hidden, but through the shadows I could see the shimmer of her spun gold hair and the wonderful line of her gleaming white arms and shoulders.

"Anything you like!" she repeated in confident gay challenge.

"I hold you to that."

Fifteen years ago I bought a scarab-ring in Luxor. After losing it once a day for a fortnight, I had it fitted with ingenious couplings so designed that when I caught it in a glove the couplings drew tight and clamped the ring to the finger. When last I found myself in Egypt, my Arab goldsmith had been gathered to his fathers, and the secret of those couplings is vested in myself. Three London and two Parisian jewellers have told me they could unravel the mystery by cutting the ring to pieces. Short of that, they confessed themselves baffled.

"Hold out your hand, Joyce," I said. "No, the other one. There!"

I slipped the ring on to her third finger, stepped back to the table, and lit a cigarette. This last was purely for effect.

Joyce looked at the ring and tried to move it.

"No good," I said. "You may cut the ring, which would be a pity because it's unique; and it's not yours till you've won the wager. Or you may amputate the finger, which also would be a pity, as that too ... well, anyway, it won't be yours to amputate if I win the bet."

Again she tried to move the ring, again without success.

"Will you take it off, please?"

I shook my head.

"You said I might fix the wager."

"Take it off, please!" she repeated, frowning disapproval upon me. Unfortunately, like Mrs. Hilary Musgrave, she looks uncommonly well when she disapproves.

"Shall we go back now?" I suggested. "I've finished my cigar."

"A joke may be carried too far," she exclaimed, stamping her foot as I remember seeing her stamp it as a wicked, flaxen-haired child of five.

"Heaven witness I'm not joking!" I protested. "Nothing I could say would move you in your present frame of mind; the wager gave me my chance. It's a ring against a hand, and on the day that sees you separated from your infernal cause, I come to claim my reward. As long as you and the cause remain unseparated you may keep the ring. I'm backing my luck; I always do, and it never fails me."

Joyce gave the ring a last despairing tug, and then with some difficulty drew the finger of her glove over it.

"How long must I wait before I may have the ring cut?" she asked.

I had not considered that.

"Till my death?" I suggested.

"Sooner than that, I hope."

"Oh, so do I. I want to win the wager and get my stakes back."

Joyce passed out before me into the quadrangle, buttoning her glove as she went. I was feeling elated by what had passed, elated and quite deliciously surprised to find how short-lived her anger had been.

"I'm afraid I'm bound up with the cause more intimately than you think," she began with unexpected gentleness. "For--let me see--three years now people have been trying to show me the error of my ways, and I go on just the same. Men and women, friends and relations, a Suffragan Bishop...."

"Quite a proper distinction," I interrupted. "Neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring."

"...and the only result is that I sink daily deeper into the mire."

"But this is where I come in."

"Too late, I'm afraid. Listen. I used to have a little money of my own. I've sold out every stock and share I possessed to help found the _New Militant_. I'm living on the salary they pay me to edit it. That looks like business, doesn't it?"

I straightened my tie, buttoned the last button of my gloves, and mounted the first step of the Hall stairs.

"Living out in the East," I said, "I have learnt the virtue of infinite patience."

Joyce remained silent. It occurred to me that I had left an important question unasked.

"When I win my wager," I began.

"You won't."

"Assume I do. No one likes losing bets, but would you seriously object to the consequences?"

Joyce gave me the wonderful dawn of a smile before replying.

"I've never given the matter a thought," she answered.

"Subconsciously?" I suggested in a manner worthy of the Seraph.

She shook her head.

"Well, give it a thought now," I begged.

"It wouldn't make much difference whether I objected or not."

"If you honestly object, if you think the whole thing's a joke in questionable taste, I'll take the ring off here and now."

Joyce began to unbutton her glove, then stopped and looked at me. I suppose my voice must have shown I was speaking seriously; her eyes were soft and kind.

"I think any girl 'ud be very lucky...." she began. I bowed, and as I did so an imp of mischief took possession of her tongue. "...very lucky indeed--to engage your roving affection."

"That wasn't what you started to say."

"I never know what I _am_ going to say. That's why I'm so good on a platform."

"Shall I take the ring off?"

"I prefer to win it in fair fight."

"If you can," I rejoined, as we pressed our way into the bright warmth of the ball-room.

My charges appeared to be profiting by my absence. Couple after couple floated by with touching heads and dreamy eyes; half-way down the room Philip was whispering in Gladys' ear and making her smile; I caught a glimpse of Robin and Cynthia; then Sylvia and the Seraph glided past.

"Don't they look sweet together?" said Joyce, half to herself, as our faces were subjected to a quick, searching glance.

"What about a turn before supper?" I suggested.

"Am I having it with you?"

"If you will."

"I should like to."

We started round the room, half-way through the waltz. Joyce was a beautiful dancer, easy, light, and rhythmical. It was too good to spoil with talking; I contented myself with one final remark.

"After all," I said, "you may as well start getting used to me."