The stupefied silence in the city was broken only by the sombre reverberations of that passing bell.
A hurriedly convoked meeting of the Hebdomadal Council issued formal notice before nightfall that the Warden of Rutland had resigned for reasons of ill-health. And profound was the impression when it was announced a little later that the vacant post would be filled by Archibald Arundel, M.A., Dean of Wallace College.
“We have won, David,” said Gav calmly when the news reached him in his quiet inner sitting-room.
But David could make no reply. His eyes glistened in the twilight as he looked out over the darkling quadrangle.…
_The Mongoose_ had won the bitter battle for free speech and generous ideals, and pæans of well-merited praise welled up for Gaveston from every corner of the kingdom. The Press was united in felicitation of its promising contemporary, save only the _Rutlandshire Argus_, whose petty regionalism no wider idealism could mitigate, and _Punch_, whose tradition it always is to support the under-dog in public affairs. But very few were moved by its cartoon that week, which showed the ex-Vice-Chancellor seated in a cavern on the banks of a river whose ripples formed the word _ISIS_, his venerable head bowed over a table on which lay the University mace and a doffed crown of office. Before him stood, not Gaveston, but a female figure whose classic draperies bore the device _COMMON SENSE_ and who held before the old man’s dreaming eyes a great scroll. On it was inscribed the legend: RESURGES: NON CANOSSA SED BARBAROSSA.
But even to a defeated rival a ffoulis keeps troth: the agenda of _The Mongoose_ were honourably modified.
In the superlatively able fifth number, eagerly anticipated from Downing Street to Wilhelmstrasse, a trenchant leader demonstrated that, when the King should come from over the water to establish His proletarian theocracy, no ministers could be found better for His projects than those who made up the present Government.
As the Lent term moved unimpeded to its prepaschal end, Gaveston was faced with an inevitable query. Where was he to pass the Vacation? Aided by a shelf of Black’s Beautiful Books and the rarer writings of Mr. Edward Hutton, he weighed the relative charms of Cefalu and Auch, Nikchitch and Gijon, Châlons and Charenton, Parknasilla and Portobello. All very well in their foreign way, but he had his future to consider. Should he not rather accept a few of those innumerable invitations to British Country Houses that were stuck in the mirror above the fireplace in his Malmaison Lodge study?