‘That is everything you want in the meanwhile, except the land on which to begin operations. I promised to take your answer back to these people by four o’clock. I shall have just time to drive to their office. I suppose that there is nothing to say except that we cannot touch it at the price?’
‘Nothing more.’
‘Very well. I will report progress to-morrow; but I have no expectation of bringing them down to your figure. Good-day.’
Although Wrentham bustled out as if in a hurry, he descended the stairs slowly.
‘He may have gone in for a mad scheme,’ he was thinking; ‘but he is a deal ’cuter in his way of setting about it than I bargained for.... This is confoundedly awkward for me.... Must get out of it somehow.’
(To be continued.)
MY OLD COLLEGE ROOMS.
No easy task would it be to analyse the medley of conflicting emotions that run riot in the heart of an old ’varsity man revisiting the haunts of his academical ‘auld langsyne.’ Even were I equal to it, I would not publish the results of my experiment. Far too sacred, too personal, at least for the pages of a magazine, were my own thoughts and memories the other day, as I stealthily stole up my old staircase in ——’s, Oxford. ‘Stealthily stole,’ I say advisedly; for I felt unpleasantly more like a burglar in my pilgrim-ascent, than a respectable country clergyman. In a university sense, generations had passed away since my college days; since I, in my generation, was wont to rollick in and out of those ancient ‘oaks’ and about those venerable banisters. One felt a kind of sad impression that one belonged to a bygone age; that one’s only rightful locus standi in the university now was a shelf in the fossil department of its museum; that one was de trop in this land of the living; that one was ‘unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown,’ a sort of college ghost that ought long since to have been laid. But now, the gray goose-quill would fain flutter on, by the page, with emotions which, as I have said, are too sacred for publication. I will confine myself to more exoteric details. At the funny old cupola-like entrance—where, on the first impulse, I found myself all but taking off my hat to the ‘silent speaking’ stones of its venerable, unsightly pile—I had met a porter, but not the porter. On the staircase I had met a scout, but not the scout. No civil salute and smile of recognition from either of those; only a curious stare—a look that seemed to ask, ‘What business have you to come back and revisit earth’—(I beg the reader’s pardon!)—‘college, disturbing us in our day and generation?’
Then, at last, well ‘winded’ by my climb, I actually stood once again in front of my own old ‘oak;’ and much I wonder if ever pious Druid stood with deeper feelings of reverence before his own! It was superscribed with a most unusual, though not foreign, name; one which to me at least was new. So far, this was a comfort; for ‘Jones’ would have made me very sad and at ‘Smith’ I feel I should have wept. As it was, I found myself already speculating with some curiosity what manner of man might own to it. Somehow, with perhaps pardonable vanity, I seemed to have expected ‘Ichabod;’ but that was not the present occupant’s name. At the inner door, which was ajar, I knocked, honestly trying not to peep; but the gentleman was not at home. Just then, a jolly young fellow, books under arm, and obviously out from lecture, came bounding up the stairs, two or three steps at a time, in the real old style. Oh, how the aged, nearly worn-out parson envied now the limbs and wind that could perform that once familiar feat! There used to be a je ne sais quoi—a sense of freedom, I suppose it was, after being ‘cribbed, cabined, and confined’ for an hour at lecture, that always made one sadly forgetful for the nonce of one’s dignity in that matter of going up-stairs. At other times, the leisurely step which betokened the importance of the (newly fledged) ‘man’ was carefully observed; and used, no doubt, to make due impression upon the freshman—that junior Verdant who always had what Carlyle would call a ‘seeing eye’ for such details of deportment. But coming from lecture, even the old hand, the third-year man, now, as of yore, involuntarily betrays a lingering trace of schoolboy days by a very natural, but most undignified, hop, skip, and jump up-stairs, to doff cap and gown and don flannels for the river.
Well, up he came, this embryo bishop, statesman, or judge—I know not which—and fixing him Ancient Mariner-wise with my eye, I told him my story; feeling rather sheepish until I had satisfactorily accounted for my being discovered hovering about the coal-bin on his landing. More than one kind of expression flitted over the youth’s features as he listened to me; but the predominating one, which his politeness in vain struggled to conceal, was characteristic of the antiquary surveying some newly dug up relic of a past epoch. ‘I am not Mr Ichabod’ (let us suppose the name), he said; ‘but I am his neighbour on this floor; and I’m sure he would wish you to go into your old rooms. I will explain it to him. He will be sorry that he was out when you came.’ With this and a mutual touch of hats, we parted; he to his rooms, and I, after an absence of some forty-five years, to mine. Suggestive enough was the very first object that caught my eye upon entering; for over the bedroom door was placed, by way of ornament, a real skull, with crossbones! There it serenely rested on a black cushion fixed to a small shelf, horribly grinning at me. I could have wished a more pleasant welcome to greet me after my long absence.