Horbury was neglecting nothing. He was building up a great scheme in his mind, and to him it seemed that every detail was worth attending to, while at the same time he did not lose sight of the whole effect. He believed in finish: there must be no rough edges. It seemed to him that a school legend must be invented. The real history was not quite what he wanted, though it might work in with a more decorative account of Lupton’s origins. One might use the textus receptus of Martin Rolle’s Foundation—the bequest of land c. 1430 to build and maintain a school where a hundred boys should be taught grammar, and ten poor scholars and six priests should pray for the Founder’s soul. This was well enough, but one might hint that Martin Rolle really refounded and re-endowed a school of Saxon origin, probably established by King Alfred himself in Luppa’s Tun. Then, again, who could show that Shakespeare had not visited Lupton? His famous schoolboy, “creeping like snail unwillingly to school,” might very possibly have been observed by the poet as he strolled by the banks of the Wand. Many famous men might have received their education at Lupton; it would not be difficult to make a plausible list of such. It must be done carefully and cautiously, with such phrases as “it has always been a tradition at Lupton that Sir Walter Raleigh received part of his education at the school”; or, again, “an earlier generation of Luptonians remembered the initials ‘W. S. S. on A.’ cut deeply in the mantel of old High School, now, unfortunately, demolished.” Antiquarians would laugh? Possibly; but who cared about antiquarians? For the average man “Charing” was derived from “chère reine,” and he loved to have it so, and Horbury intended to appeal to the average man. Though he was a schoolmaster he was no recluse, and he had marked the ways of the world from his quiet study in Lupton; hence he understood the immense value of a grain of quackery in all schemes which are meant to appeal to mortals. It was a deadly mistake to suppose that anything which was all quackery would be a success—a permanent success, at all events; it was a deadlier mistake still to suppose that anything quite devoid of quackery could pay handsomely. The average English palate would shudder at the flavour of aioli, but it would be charmed by the insertion of that petit point d’ail which turned mere goodness into triumph and laurelled perfection. And there was no need to mention the word “garlic” before the guests. Lupton was not going to be all garlic: it was to be infinitely the best scholastic dish that had ever been served—the ingredients should be unsurpassed and unsurpassable. But—King Alfred’s foundation of a school at Luppa’s Tun, and that “W. S. S. on A.” cut deeply on the mantel of the vanished High School—these and legends like unto them, these would be the last touch, le petit point d’ail.
It was a great scheme, wonderful and glorious; and the most amazing thing about it was that it was certain to be realised. There was not a flaw from start to finish. The Trustees were certain to appoint him—he had that from a sure quarter—and it was but a question of a year or two, perhaps only of a month or two, before all this great and golden vision should be converted into hard and tangible fact. He drank off his glass of whisky and soda; it had become flat and brackish, but to him it was nectar, since it was flavoured with ecstasy.
He frowned suddenly as he went upstairs to his room. An unpleasant recollection had intruded for a moment on his amazing fantasy; but he dismissed the thought as soon as it arose. That was all over, there could be no possibility of trouble from that direction; and so, his mind filled with images, he fell asleep and saw Lupton as the centre of the whole world, like Jerusalem in the ancient maps.
A student of the deep things of mysticism has detected a curious element of comedy in the management of human concerns; and there certainly seems a touch of humour in the fact that on this very night, while Horbury was building the splendid Lupton of the future, the palace of his thought and his life was shattered forever into bitter dust and nothingness. But so it was. The Dread Arrest had been solemnly recognised, and that wretched canonry at Wareham was irrevocably pronounced for doom. Fantastic were the elements of forces that had gone to the ordering of this great sentence: raw corn spirit in the guise of sherry, the impertinence (or what seemed such) of an elderly clergyman, a boiled leg of mutton, a troublesome and disobedient boy, and—another person.
II
I
He was standing in a wild, bare country. Something about it seemed vaguely familiar: the land rose and
