"What about the Power-Line guards?" I asked carefully. Stepping back into the sidecar, he declared he'd given orders that all special head- and neck-gear be made optional for them, if not discarded altogether.
"If they look down, they fall," he said cheerfully; "if they don't look down, they fall too. They'll have to learn to see without looking!"
My heart rejoiced. But I administered a final test by greeting his wife (who regarded me chillily) and expressing my regret for the accidental injury to her cheek. Her face flashed anger, as for an instant did the Chancellor's.
"For a man to strike his wife is a flunkèd thing," he declared firmly. "We don't live in the Dark Semesters any more. And we're not Furnace-Room mechanics."
"I should say not," Mrs. Rexford snapped. "And I'll tell you something else, Mr. Giles, while we're on the subject: my husband might be the Chancellor, but — "
She stopped with a look of fright, for Rexford had suddenly raised his hand. In fact he only signaled the advance-guard to proceed, but even Anastasia gasped, and Mrs. Rexford never finished her sentence.
Her husband grinned. "See you on Founder's Hill this afternoon, Mr. Giles."
I reached to touch his temples, declaring him a Candidate for Passage and Commencement. But he shook his head and cordially declined. For one thing, he said, the gesture might be looked upon by his political enemies as some sort of bribe, or at least an endorsement of my authenticity, a matter too controversial for him to take a public stand on unless he had to; for another — his grin was melancholy — he reminded me that as Chancellor his first allegiance was to the College, whose best interests he would pursue at whatever cost — enlightenedly, he hoped, and in the final service of all the Free Campus, even all studentdom. But if circumstances forced the choice ("Which Founder forfend!") between repudiating me and breaching the vows of his office, he would consent even to my Shafting, as he had to Max's. That Remusian vice-administrator of the Moishian quads in terms gone by, who had winked at Enos Enoch's lynching, was to Rexford's mind a tragic figure, unjustly maligned by simplistic Enochists unaware of the responsibilities of power.
"You'd Shaft me if you had to, sir? For teaching administrative subversion, say, if I had to?"
He gave me a level look. "It might flunk me forever. But I'd do it."
The professor-generals clapped one another on the back; the military escort cheered. For just a moment Rexford surveyed them with an expression of distaste, even loathing; then he flashed the famous grin, mischievously winked at Anastasia while embracing Mrs. Rexford, and sped away.
"Is he a Candidate or not?" Anastasia asked me.
"You're a Graduate," I replied; "what do you think?"
Flushing with pride, she considered the matter at length as she steered us out onto the highway, through the dormitory-quads and faculty-residence areas, and along the Founder's Hill road towards George's Gorge. In that vicinity, having grappled with the pluses and minuses of the case for more than an hour, she said at last, "I think he is, George. Not a Graduate, but a real Candidate for Graduation."
"I see. Why is that, Anastasia?"
"I'm not good at words," she reminded me seriously. "But embarrassed as I was to see him, after last evening (especially with Mrs. Rexford, who must hate me, much as I like her), it seemed to me there was something important about that hitting-her business. You know?" After a pause she tried again: for the Chancellor of a college to disavow and deplore such things as espionage, cheating, and secret negotiations, she seemed in her fashion to be saying, while yet not disallowing them, was in itself doubtless mere hypocrisy, like condemning wife-beating on principle while striking one's wife; yet she could imagine an elevated version of this modus operandi, so sincere and second-natural that what had been flunkèd Contradiction became passèd Paradox. And she believed that should Lucius Rexford attain that state — which was betrayed and falsified even by talking about it, as she was doing — he would be Commenced.
"Is that right, George?" she asked at the end. Inasmuch as I was obliged in any case to clasp her from behind in order to keep my seat, I smiled, patted her belly, and called her my first Graduate Assistant.
"You're teasing me!" she said, a little crossly, but abandoned the throttle to press my hand against her a moment. "If what I said is wrong, tell me so!"
But we had come to a fork in our road, some kilometers beyond George's Gorge; I caught my breath, recognizing suddenly where we were and what lay just past the next bend. A moment later my heart leaped up, and over My Ladyship's shoulder I pointed out the gambrels and cupolas of home.
The day being fine, though chill, the herd was outside in the pounds, officially supervised by one of Reginald Hector's aides. But that fellow (chosen by lot, I learned later, when the ex-Chancellor forsook the independent life) was either irresponsible or incompetent, and nowhere in sight. Once I'd got over my surprise at how much smaller everything seemed than in my kidship, I groaned at the evidences of neglect: the barn and fences needed whitewash; the pounds were filthy, the feed-cribs bare. Worst of all, the herd itself was depleted by half — owing, I could only hope, to ignorant neglect and not some keeper's bloody appetite — and the survivors were ragged and pinched as inmates of a concentration-campus. In vain I looked about for Hedda O.T.S.T., for Becky's Pride Sue or Tommy's Thomas: I recognized no one. Anastasia hung back, not to intrude upon my grief. With smarting eyes I rushed into the pound; the does scattered like wild things. Could that be B.'s P. Sue, a pinched and gimpy crone? As I wept at the likelihood, and with chagrin that they knew me no more than I them, a strong bleat came from the barn, a bucky challenge; and after it — head couched and hooves a-pound — Redfearn's Tom, charging from the dead! Stick in hand I stood, as years before, transfixed this time as much by wonder as by fright. I had retraced my way; had I also, in some wise, rewound the very tape of time? The buck was young and full of juice, despite his leanness — younger than R.'s Tom had been on the day I slew him, or Tommy's Thomas when I'd set out for Great Mall. In the instant before he was upon me I guessed he was no ghost, but Tommy's Tommy's Tom: that Triple-T who saw the light not long before my departure! Joyfully I sprang aside; he cracked the fence-rail — splendid son of splendid sires! — and neither dazed by the collision nor tempted to escape through the broken fence, spun about and recharged me at once. Anastasia squealed. Out of practice as I was, slackened by my terms in Main Detention and the life of human studentdom, I durstn't try to pin him; I parried, passed, and fended as I could, calling him all the while by name and giving him to smell, between charges, my wrapper and the amulet-of-Freddie. These intrigued him, and when at last I stripped myself (retying the a.-of-F. about my loins) and flung the wrapper over his head, its scent stirred in him some deep ancestral memory. His mood changed altogether; he permitted me to scratch his head, licked Anastasia's hand when I introduced them, and appreciatively snuffled her escutcheon.
"He's a darling, George!" she cried. "I love animals!" I smiled. But delightsome as was reunion with Triple-T and the does — who wandered up now in twos and threes, smelt of the hide, and bleated to me as to a keeper — I had come to do works of preparation. Hedda alone I lingered awhile in communion with: unbelievably aged and infirm, her beauty flown, she tottered from the barn last of all, sniffed my amulet suspiciously, then nearly wept for joy upon realizing who I was. For some minutes we nuzzled wordlessly — shocking how sere and shrunk her once-peerless udder, whose freckled daint had fired my youthful dreams! When at length I introduced her to My Ladyship, the two appraised each other without expression; then Anastasia took my arm and leaned against me, whereupon dear Hedda, with a feeble snort, gimped back into the barn, nor stirred from her rank old straw again.