ure which seems to produce an impression of great
age and at the same time of perfect modernity.

Yet the office itself, haunted though it was by the accumulated
personalities of every generation at St. Mary's, would scarcely have
possessed the magical effect of fusion which it did possess, had not all
these personalities endured in a perpetual present through the
conservative force of Venner himself. John Venables had been Steward of
the Junior Common Room for thirty-three years, but he seemed to all
these young men that came within the fragrancy of his charm to be as
much an intrinsic part of the college as the tower itself. The
moon-faced Warden, the dry-voiced dons, the deer park, the elms, the
ancient doors and traceries, the lawns and narrow entries, the groinings
and the lattices, were all subordinate in the estimation of the
undergraduates to Venner. He knew the inner history of every rag; he
realized why each man was popular or unpopular or merely ignored; he was
a treasure-house of wise counsel and kindly advice; he held the keys of
every heart. He was an old man with florid, clean-shaven face, a pair of
benignant eyes intensely blue, a rounded nose, a gentle voice and most
inimitable laugh. Something there was in him of the old family butler, a
little more of the yeoman-farmer, a trace of the head game-keeper, a
suspicion of the trainer of horses, but all these elements were blended
to produce the effect of someone wise and saintly and simple who could
trouble himself to heal the lightest wounds and could rouse with a look
or a gesture undying affection.

With such a tutelary spirit, it was not surprising the freedom of
Venner's should have been esteemed a privilege that could only be
conferred by the user's consciousness of his own right. There was no
formal election to Venner's: there simply happened a moment when the St.
Mary's man entered unembarrassed that mellow office and basked in that
sunny effluence. In this ripe old room, generous and dry as sherry wine,
how pleasant it was to sit and listen to Venner's ripe old stories: how
amazingly important seemed the trivial gossip of the college in this
historic atmosphere: how much time was apparently wasted here between
eight and ten at night, and what a thrill it always was to come into
college about half-past nine of a murky evening and stroll round
Cloisters to see if there was anybody in Venner's. It could after all
scarcely be accounted a waste of tim