He put the stopper back, went into the sitting-room, and replaced the decanter in the stand before he said in answer to a knock at his door:
"Come in! Is that you Ernshaw?"
The door opened, and Reginald Garthorne came in.
"No, it's me. That's not quite grammatical, I believe, but it's usual. Good-morning, Maxwell," he went on, holding out his hand. "I've come round early for two reasons. In the first place I want to be the first to congratulate you, and in the second place I want you to give me a brandy and soda. I got here rather late last night with one or two other Cambridge men, and one of them took us to a man's rooms in Brazenose, and we had a rather wet night of it. Not the proper thing, of course, but excusable just now."
"As for the congratulations, old man," said Maxwell, "thanks for yours and accept mine for what you've done in the Tripos, and as for the brandy and soda, well, here you are. Open that cupboard, and you'll find some soda and glasses."
As he said this, he unlocked the spirit case again, and put the brandy decanter on the table.
"I've just been having a spoonful myself in my coffee," he went on, with just a little flash of wonder why he should have said this. "The fact is, I suppose, I've been overdoing it a bit lately, and that, and the anxiety of the thing, has rather knocked me up. I felt as nervous as a freshman going in for his first viva voce, when I got up this morning."
"I don't wonder at it," said Garthorne, helping himself. "You must have been grinding infernally hard. So have I, for the matter of that, although, I didn't aspire to a double first. You really do look quite knocked up. By the way," he continued, looking at Vane with a smile whose significance he might have seen had it not been for those two spoonsful of brandy, "I suppose you've quite got over that—well, if you'll excuse me saying so—that foolishness about inherited alcoholism and that sort of stuff, and therefore you'll lay all your laurels at the feet of the fair Enid without a scruple? Of course, you remember that juvenile hiding you gave me on the "Orient"? Quite romantic, wasn't it? Well, I must admit that you proved yourself the better boy then, and as you've taken a double first and I have only got a single, you've proved yourself the better man as well. Here's to you, Maxwell, won't you join me? You know you have quite an ordeal to go through to-day, and just one won't hurt you—do you good, in fact. You look as if you wanted a bracer."
Vane listened to the tempting words, so kindly and frankly spoken, as he might have listened to words heard in a dream. All the high resolves which had shaped themselves with such infinite labour during the past two years, seemed already to have been made by someone else—a someone else who was yet himself. He had made them and he was proud of them, and, of course, he meant to hold to them; but he had conquered that deadly fear which had held him in chains so long. He was a free man now, and could do as he liked with his destiny.
His long probation was over, and he had come through it triumphant. He was to see Enid again that day for the first time for two years. He would hear her voice offering him the sweetest of all congratulations, and when it was all over, there would be a little family gathering in his rooms, just their fathers and themselves, and he would tell them everything frankly, and they should help him to choose—for after all, it was only their right, and she, surely, had the best right of all to be consulted. Meanwhile, now that he had fought and conquered that old craving for alcohol, there would be no harm, especially on such a morning as this, in joining Garthorne in just one brandy and soda.