Part 6 (1/2)
”What did you do with them?”
”I went to Oxford.”
”You? After those years of independence?”
”It had been my one pa.s.sionate dream for years.”
”The Scholar Gipsy,” ”Thyrsis,” the Preface to the ”Essays in Criticism,” one or two glimpses of the actual city, its grey spires and towers, caught from the windows of a train, had long ago set the craving in his heart. Oxford had grown dim in unattainable mists, no longer a desire so much as a poignant regret, yet now he actually walked its sacred streets.
”And you enjoyed it?” asked Stella.
”I had the most wondrous time,” Hillyard replied fervently. ”There was one bad evening, when I realised that I couldn't write poetry. After that I cut my hair and joined the Wine Club. I stroked the Torpid and rowed three in my College Eight. I had friends for the first time. One above all”
He stopped over-abruptly. Stella Croyle had the impression of a careless sentinel suddenly waked, suddenly standing to attention at the door of a treasure-house of memories. She was challenged. Very well. It was her humour to take the challenge up just to prove to herself that she could slip past a man's guard if the spirit moved her. She turned on Hillyard a pair of most friendly sympathetic eyes.
”Tell me of your friend.”
”Oh, there's not much to tell. He rowed in the same boat with me. He had just what I had not--traditions. From his small old brown manor-house in a western county to his very choice of a career, he was wrapped about in tradition. He went into the army. He had to go.”
”What is his name?”
Stella Croyle interrupted him. She was not looking at him any more. She was staring into the fire, and her body was very still. But there was excitement in her voice.
”Harry Luttrell,” replied Hillyard, and Stella Croyle did not move. ”I don't know what has become of him. You see, I had ninety pounds left out of the thousand when I left Oxford. So I just dived.”
”But you have come up again now. You will resume your friends at the point where you dived.”
”Not yet. I am going away in a week's time.”
”For long?”
”Eight months.”
”And far?”
”Very.”
”I am sorry,” said Stella.
It had been the intention of Hillyard to use his first months of real freedom in a great wandering amongst wide s.p.a.ces. The journey had been long since planned, even details of camp outfit and equipment and the calibre of rifles considered.
”I have been at my preparations for years,” he said. ”I lived in a cubbyhole in Westminster, writing and writing and writing, but when I thought of this journey to be, certain to be, the walls would dissolve, and I would walk in magical places under the sun.”
”Now the New Year reviving old desires, The thoughtful soul to solitude retires”
Stella Croyle quoted the verses gaily, and Hillyard, lost in the antic.i.p.ation of his journey, never noticed that the gaiety rang false.
”And where are you going?” she asked.
”To the Sudan.”