第45章 CHAPTER XVIII ACADEMIC(1)
The last sunlight was playing on the roofs when the travellers entered that High Street grave and holy to all Oxford men. The spirit hovering above the spires was as different from its concretions in their caps and gowns as ever the spirit of Christ was from church dogmas.
"Shall we go into Grinnings'?" asked Shelton, as they passed the club.
But each looked at his clothes, for two elegant young men in flannel suits were coming out.
"You go," said Crocker, with a smirk.
Shelton shook his head. Never before had he felt such love for this old city. It was gone now from out his life, but everything about it seemed so good and fine; even its exclusive air was not ignoble.
Clothed in the calm of history, the golden web of glorious tradition, radiant with the alchemy of memories, it bewitched him like the perfume of a woman's dress. At the entrance of a college they glanced in at the cool grey patch of stone beyond, and the scarlet of a window flowerbox--secluded, mysteriously calm--a narrow vision of the sacred past. Pale and trencher-capped, a youth with pimply face and random nose, grabbing at his cloven gown, was gazing at the noticeboard. The college porter--large man, fresh-faced, and small-mouthed--stood at his lodge door in a frank and deferential attitude.
An image of routine, he looked like one engaged to give a decorous air to multitudes of pecadilloes. His blue eyes rested on the travellers. "I don't know you, sirs, but if you want to speak Ishall be glad to hear the observations you may have to make," they seemed to say.
Against the wall reposed a bicycle with tennis-racquet buckled to its handle. A bull-dog bitch, working her snout from side to side, was snuffling horribly; the great iron-studded door to which her chain was fastened stayed immovable. Through this narrow mouth, human metal had been poured for centuries--poured, moulded, given back.
"Come along," said Shelton.
They now entered the Bishop's Head, and had their dinner in the room where Shelton had given his Derby dinner to four-and-twenty well-bred youths; here was the picture of the racehorse that the wineglass, thrown by one of them, had missed when it hit the waiter; and there, serving Crocker with anchovy sauce, was the very waiter. When they had finished, Shelton felt the old desire to rise with difficulty from the table; the old longing to patrol the streets with arm hooked in some other arm; the old eagerness to dare and do something heroic --and unlawful; the old sense that he was of the forest set, in the forest college, of the forest country in the finest world. The streets, all grave and mellow in the sunset, seemed to applaud this after-dinner stroll; the entrance quad of his old college--spaciously majestic, monastically modern, for years the heart of his universe, the focus of what had gone before it in his life, casting the shadow of its grey walls over all that had come after-brought him a sense of rest from conflict, and trust in his own important safety. The garden-gate, whose lofty spikes he had so often crowned with empty water-bottles, failed to rouse him. Nor when they passed the staircase where he had flung a leg of lamb at some indelicate disturbing tutor, did he feel remorse. High on that staircase were the rooms in which he had crammed for his degree, upon the system by which the scholar simmers on the fire of cramming, boils over at the moment of examination, and is extinct for ever after. His coach's face recurred to him, a man with thrusting eyes, who reeled off knowledge all the week, and disappeared to town on Sundays.
They passed their tutor's staircase.
"I wonder if little Turl would remember us?" said Crocker; "I should like to see him. Shall we go and look him up?""Little Turl?" said Shelton dreamily.
Mounting, they knocked upon a solid door.
"Come in," said the voice of Sleep itself.
A little man with a pink face and large red ears was sitting in a fat pink chair, as if he had been grown there.
"What do you want?" he asked of them, blinking.
"Don't you know me, sir?"
"God bless me! Crocker, isn't it? I didn't recognise you with a beard."Crocker, who had not been shaved since starting on his travels, chuckled feebly.
"You remember Shelton, sir?" he said.
"Shelton? Oh yes! How do you do, Shelton? Sit down; take a cigar";and, crossing his fat little legs, the little gentleman looked them up and down with drowsy interest, as who should say, "Now, after, all you know, why come and wake me up like this?"Shelton and Crocker took two other chairs; they too seemed thinking, "Yes, why did we come and wake him up like this? "And Shelton, who could not tell the reason why, took refuge in the smoke of his cigar.
The panelled walls were hung with prints of celebrated Greek remains;the soft, thick carpet on the floor was grateful to his tired feet;the backs of many books gleamed richly in the light of the oil lamps;the culture and tobacco smoke stole on his senses; he but vaguely comprehended Crocker's amiable talk, vaguely the answers of his little host, whose face, blinking behind the bowl of his huge meerschaum pipe, had such a queer resemblance to a moon. The door was opened, and a tall creature, whose eyes were large and brown, whose face was rosy and ironical, entered with a manly stride.
"Oh!" he said, looking round him with his chin a little in the air, "am I intruding, Turl?"The little host, blinking more than ever, murmured, "Not at all, Berryman--take a pew!"The visitor called Berryman sat down, and gazed up at the wall with his fine eyes.
Shelton had a faint remembrance of this don, and bowed; but the new-comer sat smiling, and did not notice the salute.