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SALE OF COLLEGE PROPERTY

"MATRIMONY was ordained, thirdly," said Jane Studdock to herself, "for the ht to have of the other" She had not been to church since her schooldays until she went there six o to be married, and the words of the service had stuck in her h the open door she could see the tiny kitchen of the flat and kne tidy it was The beds werethat had to be done till six o&039;clock, even supposing that Mark was really co today Al up about tea-tier than he had expected and that he would have to dine in College

"Mutual society, help, and coe had proved to be the door out of a world of work and cos to do, into so like solitary confine to waste another ," said Jane to herself sharply "I must do some work"By work she meant her doctorate thesis on Donne She still believed that if she got out all her note-books and editions and really sat down to the job she could force herself back into her lost enthusiasm for the subject But before she did so she turned over a newspaper which was lying on the table and glanced at a picture on the back page

The moment she saw the picture, she remembered her dream; not only the drea for the ht for fear Mark should wake up and fuss, yet feeling offended by the sound of his regular breathing He was an excellent sleeper Only one thing ever seeone to bed, and even that did not keep hi si face, bearded and rather yelloith a hooked nose It was frightened The ed open and the eyes stared as she had seen other men&039;s eyes stare for a second or then some sudden shock had occurred But this face seeradually she beca hunched up in one corner of a little square room hite-washed walls At last the door was opened and a rather good-looking rey beard canise hian to talk In all the dreams which Jane had hitherto drea or else one did not hear it But in this dream-and that helped to make its extraordinary realism-the conversation was in French, and Jane understood bits of it, but by no means all, just as she would have done in real life The visitor was telling the prisoner soood news And the prisoner at first looked up with a gleam of hope in his eye and said "Tiensahfa ed his mind The visitor continued in a low, fluent voice to press his point He was a good-looking man in his rather cold way, but he wore pince-nez, and these kept on catching the light so as to make his eyes invisible This, coave Jane a disagreeable impression She could notAt this point the drea his cold save it a sharp turn-just as Jane had last suive a sharp turn to the helmet on a diver&039;s head The visitor unscrewed the prisoner&039;s head and took it away Then all became confused The head was still the centre of the dream, but it was a different head now-a head with a reddish-white beard all covered with earth It belonged to an oldup in a kind of churchyard-a sort of ancient British, druidical kind ofto life "Look out!" she cried in her drea hian talking in sohtened Jane so badly that she woke up

But it was not the htmare that made the rooe of the newspaper, was the head she had seen in the nightmare : the first head (if there had been two of them) - the head of the prisoner She took up the paper EXECUTION OF ALCASAN was the headline, and beneath it, SCIENTIST BLUEBEARD GOES TO GUILLOTINE She reuely followed the case Alcasan was a distinguished radiologist in a neighbouring country-an Arab by descent, they said-who had cut short a brilliant career by poisoning his wife So that was the origin of her dreaoing to bed But that couldn&039;t be it It was this &039;s paper But of course there must have been soo when the trial began And now for Donne

"I ," said Jane: and then, "Was there a previous picture of Alcasan? Supposing"

Five minutes later she swept all her books aent to the mirror, put on her hat, and went out She was not sure where she was going Anywhere, to be out of that flat, that whole house

Mark, estow is the smallest of universities Apart froe beyond the railway, there are only two colleges; Northumberland, below Bracton on the River Wynd, and Duke&039;s opposite the Abbey Bracton takes no undergraduates It was founded in 1300 for the support of ten learned men whose duties were to pray for the soul of Henry de Bracton and study the laws of England The nuradually increased to forty, of whom only six now study Law and of whom none, perhaps, prays for the soul of Bracton Mark Studdock was a Sociologist and had been elected five years ago He was beginning to find his feet If he had felt any doubt on that point (which he did not) it would have been laid to rest when he found hi Curry just outside the post office, and seen how natural Curry found it that they should walk to College together and discuss the agenda for theCurry was the sub-warden of Bracton

"Yes," said Curry "It will take the hell of a tio on after dinner We shall have the obstructionists wasting time Luckily that&039;s the worst they can do"

You would never have guessed from the tone of Studdock&039;s reply what intense pleasure he derived from Curry&039;s use of the pronoun "we" So very recently he had been an outsider, watching the proceedings of what he then called "Curry and his gang" with awe and with little understanding Noas inside, and "the gang" e" or "the progressive elee" It had happened quite suddenly and was still sweet in the h, then?" said Studdock

"Sure to," said Curry "We&039;ve got the Warden, and the Bursar, and all the chemical and biochemical people for a start Bill the Blizzard will probably do so, but he&039;s bound to side with us if it comes to a vote Besides: I haven&039;t yet told you Dick&039;s going to be there He caht"

Studdock&039;s mind darted hither and thither in search of some safe way to conceal the fact that he did not knoho Dick was In the nick of tiue whose Christian name was Richard

"Telford?" said Studdock in a puzzled voice He knew very well that Telford could not be the Dick that Curry meant

"Good Lord! Telford!" said Curry with a laugh "No I mean Lord Feverstone-Dick Devine as he used to be"

"I was a little baffled by the idea of Telford," said Studdock, joining in the laugh "I&039; I&039;ve never met him you know"

"Oh, but you must," said Curry "Look here, coht I&039;ve asked him"

"I should like to very much," said Studdock quite truly And then, after a pause, "By the way, I suppose Feverstone&039;s own position is quite secure?"

"How do you mean?" asked Curry

"Well, there was some talk, if you remeo on holding a Fellowship"

"Oh, youwill come of that Didn&039;t you think it absolute blah?"

"As between ourselves, yes But I confess if I were put up to explain in public exactly why aa Fellow of Bracton, I shouldn&039;t find it altogether easy The real reasons are the sort that Watson would call iree Isn&039;t it important to have influential connections with the outer world? It&039;s not in the least impossible that Dick will be in the next Cabinet Even already Dick in London has been a dae than Glossop and half a dozen others of that sort have been by sitting here all their lives"

"Yes Of course that&039;s the real point It would be a little difficult to put in that forh!"

"There&039;s one thing," said Curry in a slightly less intiht to know about Dick"

"What&039;s that?"

"He got you your Fellowship"

Mark was silent He did not like things which reressive elee He did not always like Curry either His pleasure in being with him was not that sort of pleasure

"Yes," said Curry "Denniston was your chief rival Between ourselves, a good many people liked his papers better than yours It was Dick who insisted all through that you were the sort of ht"

"Very kind of you," said Studdock with a little mock bow He was surprised at the turn the conversation had taken It was an old rule at Bracton that one never mentioned in the presence of a man the circumstances of his own election, and Studdock had not realised till now that this also was one of the traditions the Progressive Elelad you&039;re going to meet Dick," said Curry "We haven&039;t ti about him I wanted to discuss with you"

Studdock looked enquiringly at him "James and I and one or two others," said Curry in a soht to be the nearden But here we are"

"It&039;s not yet twelve," said Studdock "What about popping into the Bristol for a drink?"

Into the Bristol they accordingly went It would not have been easy to preserve the atood hed harder on Studdock than on Curry, as unmarried and had a sub-warden&039;s stipend

The only tiuest at Bracton I persuaded my host to let me into the Wood and leave me there alone for an hour

Very few people were allowed into Bragdon Wood If you cae to reach it, the sense of gradual penetration into a holy of holies was very strong First you went through the Newton quadrangle, which is dry and gravelly Next you e, nearly dark at midday unless either the door into Hall should be open on your right or the buttery hatch on your left, giving you a gli on panels and a whiff of the sed from this tunnel you would find yourself in the cloister of the le called Republic Chapel is not far off: the hoarse, heavy noise of the works of a great and old clock co this cloister, past slabs and urns and busts that commemorate dead Bractonians, and then down shallow steps into the full daylight of the quadrangle called Lady Alice There were no buildings straight ahead on the fourth side of Lady Alice: only a row of elms and a wall; and here first one beca of wood pigeons In the wall there was a door It led you into a covered gallery pierced with narros on either side Looking out through these, you discovered that you were crossing a bridge and the dark-brown di under you Now you were very near your goal A wicket at the far end of the bridge brought you out on the Fellows&039; bowling-green, and across that you saw the high wall of the Wood, and through the Inigo Jones gate you caught a glireen and deep shadows

Half atime before I came to the centre of the Wood I kneas the centre, for there was the thing I had chiefly co down to it and the remains of an ancient pavement about it It was very idon Wood: out of this all the legends had coreed that the masonry was very late British-Rolo-Saxon invasion

There is good evidence that the ith the British-Roman pavement was already "Merlin&039;s Well " in the fourteenth century, though the nan

Thewas the question of selling Bragdon Wood The purchaser was the NICE, the National Institute of Coordinated Experi which would worthily house this reanisation The NICE was the first-fruit of that constructive fusion between the state and the laboratory on which so htful people base their hopes of a better world It was to be free from almost all the tiresome restraints-" red tape " was the word its supporters used-which have hitherto haely free from the restraints of economy Persistent pressure and endless diploestow had lured the new Institute away froht of all these in turn as possible scenes for its labours At tiestow had almost despaired But success was now practically certain If the NICE could get the necessary land, it would coo, if Mark had co at which such a question was to be decided, he would have expected to hear the claiainst utility openly debated He kne that that was not the way things are done The Progressive Eleed its business really very well Most of the Fellows did not know that there was any question of selling the Wood They saw, of course, froe Land", but as that appeared at every College , they were not very interested They also saw that Itedon Wood" These were not concerned with the proposed sale Curry, as sub-warden, had some letters to read The first was from a society concerned for the preservation of ancient monuments I think myself that this society had been ill-advised to make two complaints It would have been wiser if they had confined thee&039;s attention to the disrepair of the wall round the Wood When they went on to urge the desirability of building soan to be restive Before Curry sat down, everyone in the rooly to don Wood was the private property of Bracton College Then he rose again to read another letter This was froate the "reported phenomena" in the Wood - a letter "connected," as Curry said, "with the next, which, with the Warden&039;s permission, "I will now read to you" This was from a firm who had heard of the Spiritualists&039; proposal and wanted per for the phenomena Curry was directed to write short refusals to all three letters

Then careed with the action taken about these letters from busybodies outside But was it not, after all, a fact that the wall of the Wood was in a very unsatisfactory condition? At once the Bursar, James Busby, was on his feet He welcomed Lord Feverstone&039;s question He had recently taken expert advice about the wall of the Wood "Unsatisfactory" was toobut a coreat difficulty the probable cost of this was elicited froasped Lord Feverstone enquired whether the Bursar was seriously proposing that the College should undertake such an expense Busby (a large ex-clergyman with a bushy black beard) replied with soestion it would be that the question could not be treated in isolation from some important financial considerations which it would become his duty to lay before them later in the day There was a pause at this oradually, one by one, the "outsiders" and "obstructionists", theinto the debate The Progressive Element let them talk for nearly ten minutes Then Lord Feverstone wanted to knohether it was possible that the Bursar and the Preservation Co a neall and allowing Bragdon Wood to degenerate into a common The Bursar answered in a low voice that he had in a purely theoretical way got some facts about possible alternatives A barbed-wire fence-but the rest was drowned in a roar of disapproval Finally, the

During this itehts of more than one Fellow had turned to lunch, and attention had wandered But when Curry rose at five minutes to one to introduce Item 2, there was a sharp revival of interest It was called "Rectification of an Anomaly in the Stipends of Junior Fellows" I would not like to say what the junior Fellows of Bracton were getting at this time, but I believe it hardly covered the expenses of their residence in College Studdock, who had recently eed from this class, understood the look in their faces The Bursar rose to reply to Curry&039;s proposal He hoped that no one would iine he approved the anomaly which had, in 1910, excluded the lowest class of the Fellows froraph of Statute 17; but it was his duty to point out that this was the second proposal involving heavy expenditure which had co It could not be isolated froe which he hoped to lay before thereat dealadjourned for lunch, every junior had it fixed in his mind that a neall for the Wood and a rise in his own stipend were strictly exclusive alternatives