All day Maitland had scarcely tasted anything that might reasonably be called food. “He had eaten; he had not dined,” to adopt the distinction of Brillat-Savarin. He had been dependent on the gritty and flaccid hospitalities of refreshment-rooms, on the sandwich and the bun. Now he felt faint as well as weary; but, rummaging amidst his cupboards, he could find no provisions more tempting and nutritious than a box of potted shrimps, from the college stores, and a bottle of some Hungarian vintage sent by an advertising firm to the involuntary bailees of St. Gatien’s. Maitland did not feel equal to tackling these delicacies.
He did not forget that he had neglected to answer a note, on philanthropic business, from Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
Weary as he was, he took pleasure in replying at length, and left the letter out for his scout to post. Then, with a heavy headache, he tumbled into bed, where, for that matter, he went on tumbling and tossing during the greater part of the night. About five o’clock he fell into a sleep full of dreams, only to be awakened, at six, by the steam-whooper, or “devil,” a sweet boon with which his philanthropy had helped to endow the reluctant and even recalcitrant University of Oxford.
“Instead of becoming human, I have only become humanitarian,” Maitland seemed to hear his own thoughts whispering to himself in a night-mare. Through the slowly broadening winter dawn, in snatches of sleep that lasted, or seemed to last, five minutes at a time, Maitland felt the thought repeating itself, like some haunting refrain, with a feverish iteration.
CHAPTER VII.—After the Inquest.
To be ill in college rooms, how miserable it is! Mainland’s scout called him at half-past seven with the invariable question, “Do you breakfast out, sir?” If a man were in the condemned cell, his scout (if in attendance) would probably arouse him on the morning of his execution with, “Do you breakfast out, sir?”
“No,” said Maitland, in reply to the changeless inquiry; “in common room as usual. Pack my bag, I am going down by the nine o’clock train.”
Then he rose and tried to dress; but his head ached more than ever, his legs seemed to belong to someone else, and to be no subject of just complacency to their owner. He reeled as he strove to cross the room, then he struggled back into bed, where, feeling alternately hot and cold, he covered himself with his ulster, in addition to his blankets. Anywhere but in college, Maitland would, of course, have rung the bell and called his servant; but in our conservative universities, and especially in so reverend a pile as St. Gatiens, there was, naturally, no bell to ring. Maitland began to try to huddle himself into his greatcoat, that he might crawl to the window and shout to Dakyns, his scout.
But at this moment there fell most gratefully on his ear the sound of a strenuous sniff, repeated at short intervals in his sitting-room. Often had Maitland regretted the chronic cold and handkerchiefless condition of his bedmaker; but now her sniff was welcome as music, much more so than that of two hunting horns which ambitious sportsmen were trying to blow in quad.