His eyes wandered over the beautiful accidents of its profile, clear-cut against the autumnal sky’s violaceous and crepuscular glory. With its myriad pointed turrets and ogive windows and frowning battlements, the college recalled to Gaveston ffoulis’s memory those vast baronial strongholds of Scotland and Touraine which he dimly remembered from the interminable travels of his picaresque infancy.…
“Dear Mums!” he whispered to the listening tree-tops, and a far-away look bedimmed his eyes. For with the memory of those other days came back the ever-fascinating, ever-elusive image of his mother, that dear whisp of frail, ethereal beauty who throughout his waking hours was scarcely ever absent from the gentle background of his thoughts. And, remembering her, he let Time slip silently by with fleet, inaudible steps until——
Why! it was nearly eight o’clock! Too late now to dine in Hall—but what matter? He turned to open the generous hamper which, only that morning, his mother had chosen for him at Fortnum’s. (How far-off already seemed the glittering clinquetis of Piccadilly!) And there, in the quietude of his own room, Gaveston dined simply off a dish of cold Bombay duck, garnished (a bon viveur, he preferred delicacies that were out of season) with some superb bottled peas.
Rising from his second meringue, Gaveston decided to resume his reverie, and walked over to the large cheval-glass that occupied an inglenook formed by a turret—he had ordered the awestruck scout to take it from its packing-case before any of his sixteen suit-cases were unlocked. He looked at himself with some satisfaction. Was it so, he wondered, that Oxford would see him—a svelte, willowy figure, with fair hair and fair skin and fair eyes, whose every trait bore the subtle handwriting of race and breeding, and on whose lips played the most infectious of enigmatic smiles.
“Quel hors d’œuvre!” he exclaimed in involuntary admiration. He was indeed a masterpiece.
But what was that?
Tap, tap.…
Yes, a knock … a visitor already—was it possible? Quickly Gaveston tiptoed over to the Chappel concert grand which had been despatched as advance luggage, and in an instant his room was throbbing with the evanescent, moonlit melancholy of the Chopin nocturne in G-flat minor. He chose that (it was his mother’s favourite, too) because it always seemed to fill a room with just that warm sense of welcome and intimacy which a host should emanate. At the first bars of the scherzo the knocking was repeated, a little louder. He stopped short.