The Youth of Parnassus, and Other Stories

by Logan Pearsall Smith

IX.

After Foley had spent a year or two almost entirely abroad, he returned to England, began working hard at his profession, and it was some time before he found the leisure to go back to Oxford. At last he went one mid-summer alone, for an idle visit. It was the vacation; the old College was almost deserted, and sometimes in the evening he would go into the garden there, and, sitting under one of the great trees, would read, or idly watch the fading of the twilight. And now memories of the old days, and sentiments towards a place which he had once loved with a certain enthusiasm—though half forgetting it afterwards, amid his other occupations—came back to him with unexpected vividness. How much more delightful it made life, he told himself one evening, as he sat there, half lost in sentimental musing, how much more delightful it made life to have been at Oxford, to have learned to love the place as one did learn to love it—to have it always as a charming memory! It was so perfect, that evening, with the sunset still lingering faint and red behind the blue trees and towers, up there above the dusky garden stretches. And that figure of a cloistered student which Foley could vaguely distinguish on the twilight path; it was no real person, surely, but a part of the picture, a figure painted into the grey landscape to give the final touch of tranquil life! But as the figure drew nearer and became more real, Foley began to wonder, who could it be who seemed so familiar to him?

"Why, Sutton!" he called out, as he joined him, surprised at finding the American still at Oxford, "You still here?"

Sutton started, and then greeting Foley in his old reserved way, they paced together slowly on the garden path. After Foley had talked a little about his travels and work, he turned to his companion and said in a friendly way, "But tell me about yourself, Eliaphet, it's three years since I have seen you; what have you been doing, and when are you really going back to America?"

Sutton replied with all his old vagueness and reticence that he had stayed; he had found it necessary; he had not decided yet about going back.

"Probably you will be sorry to leave Oxford when the time comes?" Foley suggested, but the American did not answer.

Eliaphet was a good deal changed, Foley thought when they parted; he seemed so much thinner and more melancholy looking, and his voice was almost like that of another person. What a difference a few years made!

X.

Several times in the following days Foley met his friend again—indeed, they two just then seemed almost alone together in Oxford—and more than once, in the long summer afternoons, they walked together in a desultory way among the vacant streets and empty Colleges. Sutton was even more reserved than of old, but there was a charm in his silent company and in his affectionate, scrupulous knowledge of the place. Each of the churches, dim College chapels, and libraries was dear and familiar to him now; he had found remnants of Norman architecture, and little early Gothic windows in obscure old places which Foley, who had thought he knew Oxford so well, was forced to admit he had never visited. And even for the despised classicism, Sutton seemed to have a certain fondness, for everything that bore the stately quaint mark of the Stuart times—Laud's quadrangle at St. John's, and its Italian-looking busts and arches; the chapel at Trinity; the little Ashmolean museum, and the prim old Botanic garden, with its battered statue of Charles I. over the gate, the half neglected formality of its urns and fountain, its walls and walks within.

Then the old names of places seemed all to have a meaning for him. He could trace the remains of the Religious Houses, the Friars Minor, the Friar Preachers, the Carmelites, after which some of the more ancient streets are called; showing Foley the gateways or ruined arches, bits of College buildings which now alone remain of their former stately precincts. And on their walks together Sutton often chose by preference the little back streets, or those ancient footpaths that wind through the old heart of the city, through the mediaeval town whose gables and walls and gardens still sleep in the sun, almost untouched, behind the modern fronts and the traffic of many of the busy streets.