And in a few well-chosen phrases he had reminded the President that the males of his family on the distaff side had matriculated there ever since the days (he had rightly hesitated to qualify them as spacious) of Elizabeth, that four of his ancestral portraits were hung upon the dark[2] oak panelling of the Wallace Hall, that a slender but conspicuous lancet-window in Wallace Chapel was blazoned with his gules argent, that——
[2] The oak of Wallace Hall is curiously pale (Lit. Exec.).
But enough! That was the bell. Gaveston left his window seat, and slowly crossed the arboreous lawns towards the creeper-clad steps of that historic Hall.
Yes, for him alone amid that nervously jostling crowd of freshmen, to dine in this Hall that had nurtured the rulers and sages of England down the fairest centuries of her fame, was an experience both homely and familiar. It was something as easily acceptable as, say, luncheon in that white-panelled breakfast-room in Half Moon Street, with his own mother’s dear delightful vaguenesses floating musically across the rose-laden table. (“Gav dear, if you weren’t so clever, I’d love you so much more!”—“And if you weren’t so stupid, Mother dearest, I’d love you so much less!”—He remembered their tirelessly enchanting badinage over the gold-rimmed coffee cups down long summer afternoons.…)
For, after all was said and done, the great secret of Wallace was to be surprised at nothing. And Gaveston never was. It was with him an instinct (atavistic, he supposed).
So, even on his first night in Hall, he had finished the four solid but wholesome courses of the College dinner (“commons” weren’t they called?) long before any at the freshmen’s table. For him no need to look about with curiosity or awe, or to gaze with furtive respect at the High Table, with the berserk figure of the President muttering its truncated grace, and still less to attempt acquaintance with the gauche nonentities whom, or “which” as he said to himself with a quiet smile, chance had set upon his either hand.
Unduly reserved? No: Gaveston overflowed with the ffoulis charm, that fastidious and subtle essence which this Hall had savoured so often during the past four centuries. Even the stocky spectacled youth next but one on his right could not but sense that.
“Wonder who that chap is?” Gaveston heard him whisper to his vis-à-vis.
“I think his name is Foulis,” came the low respectful answer.