And, rising from the cushions, he stripped off his clothes there and then in the fickle quicksilver light of the vagarious moon, and plunged, a new Narcissus, into the star-strewn waters of the melancholy stream. David, of course, did the same, and when Gaveston saw the exquisite nakedness of his friend iridescent against the palpitating hornbeams, he could no longer endure the fugacious mockery of the arch-hamadryad, Time, and together they had wandered uneasily back in the querulous silence of mutual, inexplicable exasperation.…
Inebriate though he was with this passionate Pantheism, which in its intensity would have put to shame the great Walden himself in his forest home, Gaveston did not altogether forget those social activities which do so much to make Oxford (and probably Cambridge) a training ground for all that is best in English public life. Profoundly as he believed in Nature, he did not discount the urban amenities.[16]
[16] These words might well have been inscribed as an epitaph on Mr. Budd’s watery tomb. (Lit. Exec.)
Eights Week came in due course, and Gav was busied with the reception of some offshoots of his family on the Penhaligon side. His mother advised him of their coming in the postscript of a long letter from Mürren, where she was passing the summer. And Gaveston was not slow to close his Tussore collar, don the famous club tie of the Union Society, and engage a suite at the Mitre Inn.
When could a merrier party than Gaveston’s have been seen on Isis’s reedy banks? Seldom, if ever, have more envious glances been thrown than at the superb barge on which, with the aid of the faithful David, he entertained his summer-clad cousins. And never had laughter been freer and more continuous than when, on the first of the eight days of the festival, Gav showed his relatives the sights of the city, annotating the rich book of Oxford’s beauty with comments which, for wit and originality, had never been surpassed.
Immediately on the arrival of his guests, Gaveston’s flow of fresh, untrammelled humour began. Even David was amazed when he pointed to the marmalade factory outside the station and declared to the incredulous cousins that it was Worcester College.[17]
[17] Messrs. Baedekers’ guidebook gives passim an admirably accurate account of the chief features of interest, picturesque viewpoints, etc., of the university and city. It may be cordially recommended to readers of Mr. Budd’s work. (Lit. Exec.)
“So called after the sauce,” he added. And the quiet old houses of the station yard echoed with the peals of girlish laughter from the magnificent cream-coloured Daimler.
The grim walls of the prison hove in view.