“You don’t happen to know the time of the train, do you? There’s one somewhere about a quarter past nine.”
“Nine-fourteen, sir, that’s the one you want, if you’re going back Oxford way. Oh yes, you’ll have plenty of time to catch that; it isn’t not hardly five minutes to nine now.”
“Are you sure? I make it nine o’clock.”
“Well, your watch is fast, sir, that’s what it is. I get the time by wireless every night, you see, so that’s how I know. Eight fifty-five, that’s all. Your watch is fast, you see, that’s what it is.”
“Trains pretty well up to time, I suppose, on a branch line like this?”
“Well, that’s what you can’t exactly say. Sometimes you wouldn’t wish to see a train come in more prompt than what they do; sometimes I won’t say but they’re a matter of ten minutes or a quarter of an hour late. Depends on how quick they get away from the stations, you see, that’s how it is. But if you’re going to Oxford, sir, you won’t find you’re behind time, not but a minute or two; the nine-fourteen wouldn’t be later than that, not at this time in the morning she wouldn’t. Thank you, sir; very much obliged to you. If you keep straight along that path, you’ll be at the station in good time, and it isn’t much more than half an hour’s run to Oxford from there. Good morning, sir.”
Nigel crossed the lock, threaded his way between the bright nasturtiums and the Canterbury bells, and almost before the gate of the weir bridge was heard swinging to behind him, was out of sight behind the island and the trees. The lock-keeper turned his gaze once more downstream. Derek still lay motionless, with the paddle resting idly on the thwarts; wind and stream were enough to drive the crazy bark at a fair pace through the cutting. “Well, he ain’t in much of a hurry, anyway,” said the lock-keeper, and went back to weed among the geraniums.
III
The Canoe Adrift
In spite of the computations mentioned in the last chapter, Nigel found himself without a ticket on Oxford platform. He had to accost the collector, to be waved back until the collector had dealt with all the other passengers, and to undergo the indignity of a personally conducted tour to the guichet. His digs, however, were in the High; his education, incomplete in many respects, had at least accustomed him to quick changes, and it was only a minute or two past ten when he presented himself at the door of the Schools, white-tied and respectable.
“What are you, sir?” asked the porter.
“History.”
“History viva voce examinations don’t start till tomorrow. Ten o’clock, sir.”
Nigel turned away, hardly with the air of one disappointed, and retired to his digs. Oxford was full of all the horrors of a Long Vacation; earnest Americans with guidebooks, with sketchbooks, with cameras; charabanc-loads of breezy Midlanders, losing one another, hailing one another, roaring inaudible jokes across the street; patient little men who had come up for a summer school of Undertakers, trying to find their way back to Keble. There seemed to be no more room than during term, whether in the perilous streets or on the thronging pavements; North Oxford went marketing as relentlessly as ever; shop-assistants bicycled past, with lady shop-assistants perched stork-like on their steps; Cowley Fathers stumped along, eyes in the distance and cloak on shoulder; dons met, dons buttonholed each other, dons asked each other when each other was going down; only the undergraduate, for once, was a bird of passage. A grim notice of “Apartments to Let” hung in the window of Nigel’s own sitting-room; a pot of ferns stood underneath it—no, this was no place for him. He changed his white tie, hailed a taxi, and within a quarter of an hour had been deposited at Eaton Bridge.
The Gudgeon Inn stands close by Eaton Bridge, with a pleasant though untidy stretch of grass sloping down to the river; at the end is a tiny quay to which a few boats are moored, at the back of it a verandah, where holiday guests can have their tea in wet weather without actually going indoors. On the whole, there are worse places in which to wait for a dilatory cousin. Nigel explained his movements to the young lady at the bar, and, after consulting her as to the hour, ordered a large stone ginger. This, when it was brought out to him on the lawn, he fortified from a handy flask in his pocket, and sat down in its company to wait. It was impossible that Derek should arrive yet; on the other hand, it was pretty clear that he ought to turn up within half an hour or an hour at most; his course lay downstream, and he had a fair wind behind him. There was nothing for it but to sit here and philosophize. Indeed, the slow swirl of the river at his feet invited to philosophy; it chimed in with the mood of a man just coming down from Oxford, and with no very sensational achievements, so far, to be put down to his credit. A large peacock edged suspiciously into view: Nigel picked up some fragments of bread, doped them with gin, and threw them at the bird in the hope that it would become interested. A drunk peacock would surely be an exquisite sight; to see it lose, at last, the shocked staidness of its demeanour. A camping party on the other side of the stream, a little lower down, claimed his attention; two brawny young men appeared to be washing up dishes, and hanging clothes out to dry. Nigel speculated whether it would ever be possible to enjoy the kind of life
