The Grey Wig. Israel Zangwill
was kept very busy for the next few days, and could only exchange a passionate letter or two with her. For some time the examination fever had been raging, and in every college poor patients sat with wet towels round their heads. Some, who had neglected their tutor all the term, now strove to absorb his omniscience in a sitting.
On the Monday, John Lefolle was good-naturedly giving a special audience to a muscular dunce, trying to explain to him the political effects of the Crusades, when there was a knock at the sitting-room door, and the scout ushered in Mrs. Glamorys. She was bewitchingly dressed in white, and stood in the open doorway, smiling—an embodiment of the summer he was neglecting. He rose, but his tongue was paralysed. The dunce became suddenly important—a symbol of the decorum he had been outraging. His soul, torn so abruptly from history to romance, could not get up the right emotion. Why this imprudence of Winifred's? She had been so careful heretofore.
"What a lot of boots there are on your staircase!" she said gaily.
He laughed. The spell was broken. "Yes, the heap to be cleaned is rather obtrusive," he said, "but I suppose it is a sort of tradition."
"I think I've got hold of the thing pretty well now, sir." The dunce rose and smiled, and his tutor realised how little the dunce had to learn in some things. He felt quite grateful to him.
"Oh, well, you'll come and see me again after lunch, won't you, if one or two points occur to you for elucidation," he said, feeling vaguely a liar, and generally guilty. But when, on the departure of the dunce, Winifred held out her arms, everything fell from him but the sense of the exquisite moment. Their lips met for the first time, but only for an instant. He had scarcely time to realise that this wonderful thing had happened before the mobile creature had darted to his book-shelves and was examining a Thucydides upside down.
"How clever to know Greek!" she exclaimed. "And do you really talk it with the other dons?"
"No, we never talk shop," he laughed. "But, Winifred, what made you come here?"
"I had never seen Oxford. Isn't it beautiful?"
"There's nothing beautiful here," he said, looking round his sober study.
"No," she admitted; "there's nothing I care for here," and had left another celestial kiss on his lips before he knew it. "And now you must take me to lunch and on the river."
He stammered, "I have—work."
She pouted. "But I can't stay beyond to-morrow morning, and I want so much to see all your celebrated oarsmen practising."
"You are not staying over the night?" he gasped.
"Yes, I am," and she threw him a dazzling glance.
His heart went pit-a-pat. "Where?" he murmured.
"Oh, some poky little hotel near the station. The swell hotels are full."
He was glad to hear she was not conspicuously quartered.
"So many people have come down already for Commem," he said. "I suppose they are anxious to see the Generals get their degrees. But hadn't we better go somewhere and lunch?"
They went down the stone staircase, past the battalion of boots, and across the quad. He felt that all the windows were alive with eyes, but she insisted on standing still and admiring their ivied picturesqueness. After lunch he shamefacedly borrowed the dunce's punt. The necessities of punting, which kept him far from her, and demanded much adroit labour, gradually restored his self-respect, and he was able to look the uncelebrated oarsmen they met in the eyes, except when they were accompanied by their parents and sisters, which subtly made him feel uncomfortable again. But Winifred, piquant under her pink parasol, was singularly at ease, enraptured with the changing beauty of the river, applauding with childish glee the wild flowers on the banks, or the rippling reflections in the water.
"Look, look!" she cried once, pointing skyward. He stared upwards, expecting a balloon at least. But it was only "Keats' little rosy cloud," she explained. It was not her fault if he did not find the excursion unreservedly idyllic.
"How stupid," she reflected, "to keep all those nice boys cooped up reading dead languages in a spot made for life and love."
"I'm afraid they don't disturb the dead languages so much as you think," he reassured her, smiling. "And there will be plenty of love-making during Commem."
"I am so glad. I suppose there are lots of engagements that week."
"Oh, yes—but not one per cent come to anything."
"Really? Oh, how fickle men are!"
That seemed rather question-begging, but he was so thrilled by the implicit revelation that she could not even imagine feminine inconstancy, that he forebore to draw her attention to her inadequate logic.
So childish and thoughtless indeed was she that day that nothing would content her but attending a "Viva," which he had incautiously informed her was public.
"Nobody will notice us," she urged with strange unconsciousness of her loveliness. "Besides, they don't know I'm not your sister."
"The Oxford intellect is sceptical," he said, laughing. "It cultivates philosophical doubt."
But, putting a bold face on the matter, and assuming a fraternal air, he took her to the torture-chamber, in which candidates sat dolefully on a row of chairs against the wall, waiting their turn to come before the three grand inquisitors at the table. Fortunately, Winifred and he were the only spectators; but unfortunately they blundered in at the very moment when the poor owner of the punt was on the rack. The central inquisitor was trying to extract from him information about à Becket, almost prompting him with the very words, but without penetrating through the duncical denseness. John Lefolle breathed more freely when the Crusades were broached; but, alas, it very soon became evident that the dunce had by no means "got hold of the thing." As the dunce passed out sadly, obviously ploughed, John Lefolle suffered more than he. So conscience-stricken was he that, when he had accompanied Winifred as far as her hotel, he refused her invitation to come in, pleading the compulsoriness of duty and dinner in Hall. But he could not get away without promising to call in during the evening.
The prospect of this visit was with him all through dinner, at once tempting and terrifying. Assuredly there was a skeleton at his feast, as he sat at the high table, facing the Master. The venerable portraits round the Hall seemed to rebuke his romantic waywardness. In the common-room, he sipped his port uneasily, listening as in a daze to the discussion on Free Will, which an eminent stranger had stirred up. How academic it seemed, compared with the passionate realities of life. But somehow he found himself lingering on at the academic discussion, postponing the realities of life. Every now and again, he was impelled to glance at his watch; but suddenly murmuring, "It is very late," he pulled himself together, and took leave of his learned brethren. But in the street the sight of a telegraph office drew his steps to it, and almost mechanically he wrote out the message: "Regret detained. Will call early in morning."
When he did call in the morning, he was told she had gone back to London the night before on receipt of a telegram. He turned away with a bitter pang of disappointment and regret.
IV
Their subsequent correspondence was only the more amorous. The reason she had fled from the hotel, she explained, was that she could not endure the night in those stuffy quarters. He consoled himself with the hope of seeing much of her during the Long Vacation. He did see her once at her own reception, but this time her husband wandered about the two rooms. The cosy corner was impossible, and they could only manage to gasp out a few mutual endearments amid the buzz and movement, and to arrange a rendezvous for the end of July. When the day came, he received a heart-broken letter, stating that her husband had borne her away to Goodwood. In a postscript she informed him that "Quicksilver was a sure thing." Much correspondence passed without another meeting being effected, and he lent