All about their quadrangle the pillars of the cloisters glowed (although they were in shadow) with the dark rose-gold of the brick. Above the arches of the cloisters a terrace of rose-coloured brickwork circumscribed the quadrangle at about twenty feet above the ground; and punctuating the wall at the rear of this high terrace were the doors of the Professors’ apartment. On each door, according to custom, the owner’s name was added to the long list of former occupants. These names were carefully printed on the black wood of each door, their vertical columns of small and exact lettering all but filling the available space. The rooms themselves were small and uniform in shape, but were as various in character as their occupants.
The first thing that the professors did on returning to their quarters was to go to their several rooms and change their black gowns of office for the dark-red variety issued for their evening hours.
Their mortar-boards were hung up behind their doors or sent skimming across their rooms to some convenient ledge or corner. The dog’s-eared condition of most of their boards was due to this ‘skimming’. When thrown in the right way, out of doors and against a slight breeze, they could be made to climb into the air, the black cup uppermost, the tassels floating below like the black tails of donkeys. When thirty at a time soared at the sun above the quadrangle, then was a schoolboy’s nightmare made palpable.
Once in their wine-red gowns it was the usual custom to step out of their rooms on to the terrace of rose-red brick, where, leaning on its balustrade, the professors would spend one of the pleasantest hours of the day, conversing or ruminating until the sound of the supper-gong called them to the refectory.
To the old Quadman, sweeping the leaves from the mellow brickwork of the quadrangle floor, it was a sight that never failed to please as, surrounded on every side by the glowing cloisters and above them by the long wine-red line of the professors as they leaned with their elbows on the terrace wall, he shepherded the fluttering leaves together with his ragged broom.
On this particular night, although not a single mortar-board was sent skimming, the staff became very flighty indeed towards the end of their evening meal in the Long Hall, when innumerable suggestions were propounded as to the inner reason for the Prunesquallors’ invitations. The most fantastic of all was put forward by Cutflower, to wit that Irma, in need of a husband, was turning to them as a possible source. At this suggestion the crude Opus Fluke, in an excess of ribald mirth, crashed his great, raw ham of a hand down on the long table so heavily as to cause a
The idea that any one of them should get married seemed to them ludicrously funny. It was not that they felt themselves unworthy, far from it. It was that such a thing belonged to another world.
‘But yes, but yes, indeed. Cutflower, you are right,’ said Shrivell at the first opportunity of making himself heard. ‘Shred and I were saying much the same thing.’
‘Quite so,’ said Shred.
‘In my case,’ said Shrivell, ‘sublimation is simple enough, for what with the crags and eagles that find their way into every confounded dream I have – and I dream every night, not to speak of my automatic writing, which puts my absurd love for Nature in its place – for in reading what I have written, as it were in a trance, I can see how foolish it is to give a thought to natural phenomena, which are, after all, nothing but an accretion of accidents … er … where was I?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Perch-Prism. ‘The point is that we have been invited: that we shall be guests, and that above all we shall do the right thing. Good grief!’ he said, looking about him at the faces of the staff, ‘I wish I was going alone.’
A bell rang.
The Professors rose at once to their feet. A moment of traditional observance had arrived. Turning the long tables upside down – and there were twelve of them – they seated themselves, one behind another, within the upturned table tops as though they were boats and were about to oar their way into some fabulous ocean.
