Next morning he repaired to the official residence of the Vice-Chancellor. But not without difficulty, for political feeling had been running high these days. Stout barricades had been erected across both ends of the Turl; the cross-streets were permanently closed to traffic; only senior members of the University who had passed the climacteric age of sixty-three, or such junior members as had certificates of loyal character from the Hebdomadal Council, or one of the non-political clubs, were allowed to pass the barrier. Pickets of chosen men from the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, steel-helmeted and armed to the teeth, guarded the venerable Warden of Rutland College from the possible approach of wild-eyed trade-unionists, Chartists or Agnostics--for such abounded, at large in the streets.
Gaveston, however, was known even to the rough soldier lads, and had only to show to their officer the passport which Uncle Wilkie’s diplomatic influence had procured for his last trip to Brittany. He was escorted to the massive gates of Rutland, whence protruded half-a-dozen Stokes guns manned by stalwart Rhodes Scholars who in their home townships had been office-bearers of the Ku-Klux-Klan, and through the barbed wire entanglements which covered the immemorial gravel[19] of the quadrangle.
In the ante-ante-chamber he smilingly complied with the senior proctor’s request to allow a search of his person for anarchistical bombs or seditious literature, and in the ante-chamber he signed a solemn affirmation that he possessed no copies of the works of Bernard Shaw, the Grand Guignol dramatists (whose influence was then so profoundly felt), or the early poems of William Wordsworth, and that he had passed Responsions with not less than third-class honours.
At last the innermost portal was unlocked and creaked slowly open. As he entered the sanctum of his formidable rival Gaveston straightened himself instinctively.
But the Vice-Chancellor himself was an anti-climax.
At a glance Gav saw that here at least no elaborate diplomacy would be needed: the characteristic ffoulis charm would suffice. The venerable Warden, for his part, veteran though he was of a thousand such encounters, saw that at last he had met a duellist worthy of a finer Toledo steel than ever he could wield. He glanced out of his armoured window towards the towering dome of the Shelley Memorial, and his lips tightened.