Читать книгу The Vision Splendid (D. K. Broster) (Literary Thoughts Edition) - D. K. Broster - Страница 23

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Not only the slumber proper to the Long Vacation, but the particular drowsy calm of the afternoon hung that day in sunlight over Oriel. In his lodge at the gate the porter dozed peaceably over Jackson's Oxford Journal; and, owing to this charmed sleep, a stray black spaniel, of an architectural turn of mind, who had now for half an hour or so been exploring both quadrangles, was at this moment seated quietly in the outer, in front of that porch which distinguishes Oriel from all other colleges, appearing to meditate, in the intervals of scratching himself, on the characteristics of Oxford Gothic, or to admire the few plants in pots, relics of the summer term, ranked down the steps against the wall. Across this porch the September sun cut diagonally, so that half the statue of the Virgin above it was in shade, and one of the two Kings beneath her, and the shadow of the gables from the gateway front lay in sloping battlements on the gravel. Merton tower, looking down over the long roof with its air of being part of the same building, was still in full sunlight, like the Provost's lodgings on the north side of the quadrangle, but, save the slowly creeping shadows, the spaniel was the only living thing visible in the sleepy peace which no undergraduate clamour had disturbed for three months past. Such Fellows as were in residence were out walking or riding – all but two. The porter, if roused, could have told an inquirer – as he was shortly to tell Tristram – that Mr. Dormer was in his rooms; that he was working very hard, he believed, and had not been out of college, let alone on a horse, for three days. Up the staircase on the right – not that he gave this unnecessary indication to Mr. Hungerford.

But at the present moment, though Tristram's friend was sitting at his manuscript-strewn writing-table, he was not working; he was leaning back in his tall chair, seeming not a little exhausted. Those who looked at Charles Dormer's face only once were apt, on that first impression, to think it refined to the point of femininity. But they never said so a second time. Somewhat unnaturally thin for a young man of thirty, it spoke of an early-learnt self-control, of ardour in leash and a very sensitive endurance, the whole touched with a kind of angelic severity and force. The eyes were kinder than the mouth, and if the expression suggested possibilities of relentlessness, it indicated still more clearly against whom that relentlessness would chiefly be directed – probably for some years had already been directed – Charles Dormer. But since to these less popular attributes the young Fellow joined a general physical exterior of unusual distinction, he did not meet with any marked success in his constant endeavour to make himself out quite an ordinary person. People were only too ready to see in him the ancestor who fell for the King at Newbury, and Tristram, when he wished genuinely to annoy him, had merely to repeat the effusive remarks on his appearance which he had the fortune to overhear from some fair lips one Commemoration. Mr. Dormer of Oriel had no use for the externals of romance.