“Something wrong, Gav?” asked Mongo, noticing his tremor.
But Gaveston only smiled enigmatically, and Mongo, with quick perceptiveness, hinted successfully to his other visitors that there was another common-room for junior members of the college somewhere about.
“Well, I don’t know, Mongo. You see----” He stopped as if to collect his thoughts, and at once Mongo saw that something was seriously wrong.
“I--I think I see, Gav.” The old man laid a hand on his shoulder as he spoke. “You’ve rushed things a little, haven’t you? Oxford doesn’t stand that, you know.”
“But you’ve drunk the draught too quickly, Gav.”
“That’s what it is. And now … well, it simply can’t go on.… No lees for me!” His voice quavered a little.
His voice was firm again. He blew his nose. Mongo blew his. Both gulped.
“But still, term’s not over yet. I’ve time for new plans, and I’ll certainly give a party for Commem. You’ll come, Mongo?”
“Why, of course, Gav.” The Dean was recovering his youthful spirits again. And Gav too felt happier when he came across the quadrangle once more. After all, there was a world outside Wallace, and it needed conquering.…
He was passing Daunchey the bookseller’s window as he wondered. A card caught his eye.
It would have to be done. His mind was made up, and he stepped into the shop. He was welcomed. Old Mr. Daunchey himself hurried forward from his counting-house, rubbing his hands.
“Certainly, sir. And if I might suggest it, sir, your name in them would increase their value. We might even issue a special catalogue.…”
But the thought gave Gaveston pause. He rather shuddered. And he glanced at the long lines of second- and even third-hand books, ranged there in penitential rows, drilled into anonymity, like lost dogs or waifs and strays … each once the darling purchase of some eager Oxonian, each.… Before his eyes rose the phantasms and sosias of generation upon dead generation of his predecessors, buyers at first and sellers at last of books, thronging the air with their insistent presences, pleading with poor withered fingers for their possessions. A charnel house of books, a morgue of literature! No! Impossible!
“Perhaps, Daunchey, you’d better not send just yet,” he said quickly. And partly to assuage the aged bookseller’s disappointment, partly to ward off that too often told anecdote of how the P … of W … had entered once to ask for the copy of the (current) _Sporting Times_, Gaveston ordered two copies of _La Dame aux Camelias_, in its most unexpurgated form.