“We must have done, David, with the fescennine dimness of artificial things. We must be Pagan now, but Pagan in a new way—savage faun-like creatures, lithe and blithe and primitive, we shall cease to be the jaded votaries of the perverse and we shall hurl inexorably down our grinning unbelieved-in idols!”
“Good,” interrupted David impulsively. “And how do we start?”
“We must free our bodies and our souls,” Gav went on, never at a loss. “We’ll give rein to our instincts and we’ll hire a punt.”
“Yes, let’s!” cried David, ablaze with god-touched enthusiasm.
And then, as April turned into May, and May into June, the handsome pair could be seen on all the rivers of Oxford. The Thames knew them well, as also did the Isis, nor was a nook or creek on Cherwell or on Char left unexplored by their venturous oars. David it was who always plied the scull, while Gaveston lay on the punt’s keel in white flannels, sometimes idly holding the tasselled rudder-cords, his shirt of Tussore well open at the neck, revelling in this strenuous out-of-doors life, and watching, day in, day out, his friend standing sculptured above him against the jade-blue sky and athletically wielding the long, dripping oar.
Sometimes they journeyed far out to the lush sequestered creeks of Windrush and Evenlode, and, passing a score of poet-laden canoes, would anchor in a dreaming silence to watch the curious swimmings of ephemeral moles and the filigree antics of the booming water-beetles. And there, with the blue dimness of evening folding softly in about them, they would sup off rosy prawns and plump white-hearted cherries in deep meadows all prankt with ragged camphire and callow and pied cantharis, and then, in a calm moon-washed silence beyond the ruffling of words or of laughter, they would float slowly, slowly back beneath the orbing planets that overhung the distant towers of Iffley, trailing their fingers coolly in the dimpling eddies of their wake, their ears untroubled, save by the hoarse unearthly wailing of some night-flying fritillary, or by the occasional clearing of each other’s throats.
Once from a tree that darkly reached out over the water came the sudden capitous perfume of syringa, and the night grew unendurably canicular. There was a plop. A discarded cherry-stone had tumbled from the scuppers, and the mirror of the warm tranquil water was shivered by annular ripples broadening sluggishly to either bank. That was all. Nothing stirred. Gaveston was reduced to a state of utter poignancy he had seldom known before.
“David,” he whispered across the rowlocks. “I can’t talk.…”