"My dear Gwen,"I hope you understand that Lady Dashwood will keep you till the 3rd. You don't mention the Warden! Does that mean that you are making no progress in that direction? Perhaps taking no trouble!"The question is, where you will go on the 3rd?"
"My dear Gwen,
"I hope you understand that Lady Dashwood will keep you till the 3rd. You don't mention the Warden! Does that mean that you are making no progress in that direction? Perhaps taking no trouble!
"The question is, where you will go on the 3rd?"
Here Gwen's heart gave a thump of alarm and dismay.
"It is all off with your cousin Bridget. She writes that she can't have you, because she has to be in town unexpectedly. This is only an excuse. I am disappointed but not surprised, after that record behaviour to me when the war broke out and after promising that I should be in her show in France, and then backing out of it. Exactly why, I found out only yesterday! You remember that General X. had actually to separate two of the 'angels' that were flitting about on their work of mercy and had come to blows over it. Well, one of the two was your cousin Bridget. That didn't get photographed in the papers. It would have looked sweet. But now I'm going to give you a scolding. Bridget did get wind of your muddling about at the Ringwood's little hospital this summer, and spending all your time and energy on a man who I told you was no use. What's the good of talking any more about it? I've talked till I'm blue—and yet you will no doubt go and do the same thing again."I ought not to have to tell you that if you do come across any stray Undergraduates, don't go for them. Nothing will come of it. Try and keep this in your noddle. Go for Dr. Middleton—men of that age are often silliest about girls—and don't simply go mooning along. Then why did you go and lose your umbrella? You have nothing in this wide world to think of but to keep yourself and your baggage together."It's the second you have lost this year. I can't afford another. You must 'borrow' one. Your new winter rig-out is more than I can afford. I'm being dunned for bills that have only run two years. Why can't I make you realise all this? What is the matter with you? Give the maid who waits on you half a crown, nothing to the butler. Lady D. is sure to see you off—and you can leave the taxi to her. Leave your laundry bill at the back of a drawer—as if you had mislaid it. I will send you a P.O. for your ticket to Stow."
"It is all off with your cousin Bridget. She writes that she can't have you, because she has to be in town unexpectedly. This is only an excuse. I am disappointed but not surprised, after that record behaviour to me when the war broke out and after promising that I should be in her show in France, and then backing out of it. Exactly why, I found out only yesterday! You remember that General X. had actually to separate two of the 'angels' that were flitting about on their work of mercy and had come to blows over it. Well, one of the two was your cousin Bridget. That didn't get photographed in the papers. It would have looked sweet. But now I'm going to give you a scolding. Bridget did get wind of your muddling about at the Ringwood's little hospital this summer, and spending all your time and energy on a man who I told you was no use. What's the good of talking any more about it? I've talked till I'm blue—and yet you will no doubt go and do the same thing again.
"I ought not to have to tell you that if you do come across any stray Undergraduates, don't go for them. Nothing will come of it. Try and keep this in your noddle. Go for Dr. Middleton—men of that age are often silliest about girls—and don't simply go mooning along. Then why did you go and lose your umbrella? You have nothing in this wide world to think of but to keep yourself and your baggage together.
"It's the second you have lost this year. I can't afford another. You must 'borrow' one. Your new winter rig-out is more than I can afford. I'm being dunned for bills that have only run two years. Why can't I make you realise all this? What is the matter with you? Give the maid who waits on you half a crown, nothing to the butler. Lady D. is sure to see you off—and you can leave the taxi to her. Leave your laundry bill at the back of a drawer—as if you had mislaid it. I will send you a P.O. for your ticket to Stow."
Here Gwen made a pause, for her heart was thumping loudly.
"There's nothing for it but to go to Nana's cottage at Stow for the moment. I know it's beastly dull for you—but it's partly your own fault that you are to have a dose of Stow. I'm full up for two months and more, but I'll see what I can do for you at once. I am writing to Mrs. Greenleafe Potten, to ask her if she will have you for a week on Monday, but I'm afraid she won't. At Stow you won't need anything but a few stamps and a penny for Sunday collection. I've written to Nana. She only charges me ten shillings a week for you. She will mend up your clothes and make two or three blouses for you into the bargain. Don't attempt to help her. They must be done properly. Get on with that flannelette frock for the Serb relief. Address me still here.
"There's nothing for it but to go to Nana's cottage at Stow for the moment. I know it's beastly dull for you—but it's partly your own fault that you are to have a dose of Stow. I'm full up for two months and more, but I'll see what I can do for you at once. I am writing to Mrs. Greenleafe Potten, to ask her if she will have you for a week on Monday, but I'm afraid she won't. At Stow you won't need anything but a few stamps and a penny for Sunday collection. I've written to Nana. She only charges me ten shillings a week for you. She will mend up your clothes and make two or three blouses for you into the bargain. Don't attempt to help her. They must be done properly. Get on with that flannelette frock for the Serb relief. Address me still here.
"Your very loving,"Mother."
Nana's cottage at Stow! Thatch smelling of the November rains; a stuffy little parlour with a smoky fire. Forlorn trees outside shedding their last leaves into the ditch at the side of the lane. Her old nurse, nearly stone deaf, as her sole companion.
Gwen felt her knees trembling under her. Her eyes smarted and a great sob came into her throat. She had no home. Nobody wanted her!
A tear fell upon the envelope in her hand, and one fell upon the red carpet under her feet. She must try and not cry, crying made one ugly. She must go to her room as quickly as she could.
Then came noiselessly out from the curtained door at Gwen's right hand the figure of Dr. Middleton. He was already dressed for dinner, his face composed and dignified as usual, but preoccupied as if the business of the day was not over. There were these letters waiting for him on the table. He came on, and Gwen, blinded by a big tear in each eye, vaguely knew that he stooped and swept up the letters in his hand. Then he turned his face towards her in his slow, deliberate way and looked. She closed her eyes, and the two tears squeezed between the lids, ran down her cheeks leaving the delicate rosy skin wet and shining under the electric light.
Tears had rarely been seen by the Warden: never—in fact—until lately! He was startled by them and disconcerted.
"Has anything happened?" he asked. "Anything serious?" It would need to be something very serious for tears!
The gentleness of his voice only made the desolation in Gwen's heart the more poignant. In a week's time she would have to leave this beautiful kindly little home, this house of refuge. The fear she had had before of the Warden vanished at his sudden tendernessof tone; he seemed now something to cling to, something solid and protective that belonged to the world of ease and comfort, of good things; things to be desired above all else, and from which she was going to be cruelly banished—to Stow. She made a convulsive noise somewhere in her young throat, but was inarticulate.
There came sounds of approaching steps. The Warden hesitated but only for a moment. He moved to the door of the library.
"Come in here," he said, a little peremptorily, and he turned and opened it for Gwen.
Gwen slid within and moving blindly, knocked herself against the protruding wing of his book-shelves. That made the Warden vexed with somebody, the somebody who had made the child cry so much that she couldn't see where she was going. He closed the door behind her.
"You have bad news in that letter?" he asked. "Your mother is not ill?"
Gwen shook her head and stared upon the floor, her lips twitching.
"Anything you can talk over with Lady Dashwood?" he asked.
"No," was the stifled answer with a shake of the dark head.
"Can you tell me about it? I might be able to advise, help you?"
"No!" This time the sound was long drawn out with a shrill sob.
What was to be done?
"Try not to cry!" he said gently. "Tell me what it is all about. If you need help—perhaps I can help you!"
So much protecting sympathy given to her, after that letter, made Gwen feel the joy of utter weakness in the presence of strength, of saving support.
"Shall I read that letter?" he asked, putting out his hand.
Gwen clutched it tighter. No, no, that would be fatal! He laid his hand upon hers. Gwen began to tremble. She shook from head to foot, even her teeth chattered. She held tight on to that letter—but she leaned nearer to him.
"Then," said the Warden, without removing his hand, "tell me what is troubling you? It is something in that letter?"
Gwen moved her lips and made a great effort to speak.
"It's—it's nothing!" she said.
"Nothing!" repeated the Warden, just a little sternly.
This was too much for Gwen, the tears rose again swiftly into her eyes and began to drop down her cheeks. "It's only——" she began.
"Yes, tell me," said the Warden, coaxingly, for those tears hurt him, "tell me, child, never mind what it is."
"It's only—," she began again, and now her teeth chattered, "only—that nobody cares what happens to me—I've got no home!"
That this pretty, inoffensive, solitary child had no home, was no news to the Warden. His sister had hinted at it on the day that Gwen was left behind by her mother. But he had dismissed the matter, as not concerning the college or the reconstruction of National Education. Since then whenever it cropped up again, he again dismissed it, because—well, because his mind was not clear. Now, suddenly, he seemed to be more certain, his thoughts clearer. Each tear that Gwen dropped seemed to drop some responsibility upon him. His face must have betrayed this—perhaps his hands also. How it happened the Warden did not quite know, but he was conscious that the girl made amovement towards him, and then he found himself holding her in his arms. She was weeping convulsively into his shirt-front—weeping out the griefs of her childhood and girlhood and staining his shirt front with responsibility for them all, soaking him with petty cares, futile recollections, mean subterfuges, silly triumphs, sordid disappointments, all the small squalid moral muddle that Belinda Scotts call "life."
All this smothered the Warden's shirt-front and trickled sideways into the softer part of that article of his dress.
For the first few moments his power of thinking failed him. He was conscious only of his hands on her waist and shoulder, of the warmth of her dark hair against his face. He could feel her heart thumping, thumping in her slender body against his.
A knock came at the door.
The Warden came to himself. He released the weeping girl gently and walked to the door.
He opened it, holding it in his hand. "What is it, Robinson?" he asked, for he had for the moment forgotten that it was dinner time, and that a guest was expected.
"Mr. Boreham is in the drawing-room, sir," said the old servant very meekly, for he met the narrow eyes fixed coldly upon him.
"Very well," said the Warden, and he closed the door again.
Then he turned round and looked at Gwendolen Scott. She was standing exactly where he had left her, standing with her hands clutching at a little pocket-handkerchief and her letter. She was waiting. Her wet eyelashes almost rested on her flushed cheeks. Her lips were slightly swollen. She was not crying, she was still and silent. She was waiting—her conceit for the moment gone—she was waiting to know from him what was going to become of her. Her wholedrooping attitude was profoundly humble. The humility of it gave Middleton a strange pang of pain and pleasure.
The way in which the desire for power expresses itself in a man or woman is the supreme test of character. The weak fritter away on nothings the driving force of this priceless instinct; this instinct that has raised us from primeval slime to the mastery of the world. The weak waste it, it seems to slip through their fingers and vanish. Only the strong can bend this spiritual energy to the service of an important issue, and the strongest of all do this unconsciously, so that He, who is supreme Master of the souls of men, could say, "Why callest thouMegood?"
The Warden in his small sphere of academic life showed himself to be one of the strong sort. His mind was analytical rather than constructive, but among all the crowded teaching staff of Oxford only one other man—and he, too, now the head of a famous college—had given as much of himself to his pupils. Indeed, so much had the Warden given, that he had left little for himself. His time and his extraordinarily wide knowledge, materials that he had gathered for his own use, all were at the service of younger men who appealed to him for guidance. He grasped at opportunities for them, found gaps that they could fill, he criticised, suggested, pushed; and so the years went on, and his own books remained unwritten. Only now, when a new world seemed to him to be in the making—he sat down deliberately to give his own thoughts expression.
Men like Middleton are rare in any University; a man unselfish enough and able enough to spend himself, sacrifice himself in "making men." And even this outstanding usefulness, this masterly hold he had of the best men who passed through King's would not have forced his colleagues to elect him asWarden. They made him Warden because they couldn't help themselves, because he was in all ways the dominating personality of the college, and even the book weary, the dull, the frankly cynical among the Fellows could not escape from the conviction that King's would be safe in Middleton's hands, so there was no reason to seek further afield.
But women and sentiment had played a very small part in the Warden's life. His acquaintance with women had been superficial. He did not profess to understand them. Gwendolen Scott had for several days sat at his table, looking like a flower. That her emotions were shallow and her mind vacant did not occur to the Warden. She was like a flower—that was all! His business had been with men—young men. And just now, as one by one, these young men, once the interest and pride of his college, were stricken down as they stood upon the very threshold of life, the Warden's heart had become empty and aching.
And now, on this autumn evening, this sobbing girl seemed, somehow, all part of the awful tragedy that was being enacted, only in her case—he had the power to help. He need not let her wander alone into the wilderness of life.
For the first time in his life, his sense of power betrayed him. It was in his own hands to mould the future of this helpless girl—so he imagined!
He experienced two or three delicious moments as he walked towards her, knowing that she would melt into his arms and give up all her sorrows into his keeping. She was waiting on his will! But was this love?
The Warden was well aware that it was not love, such as a man of his temperament conceived love to be.
But his youth was passed. The time had gone when he could fall in love and marry a common mortal under the impression that she was an angel.Was it likely that now, in middle life, he would find a woman who would rouse the deepest of his emotions or satisfy the needs of his life?
Why should he expect to find at forty, what few men meet in the prime of youth? All that he could expect now—hope for—was standing there waiting for him. Waiting with blushes, timid, dawning hope; full of trust and so pathetically humble!
He took her into his arms and spoke, and his voice was steady but very low and a little husky.
"There is no time to talk now. But you shall not go out into the wilderness of life, if you are afraid."
She pressed her face closer to him—in answer.
"If you want to, if you care to—come to me, I shall not refuse you a home. You understand?"
She did fully understand. Her mother's letter had made it clearer than ever to her that marriage with somebody sufficiently well off is a haven of refuge for a woman, a port to be steered for with all available strength.
Suddenly and unexpectedly Gwen had found herself in harbour, and the stormy sea passed.
"Run up to your room now," he said, "and bathe your face and come down to the drawing-room as if nothing had happened."
He did not kiss her. A thought, such as only disturbs a man of scrupulous honour, came to him. He was so much older than she was that she must have time to think—she must come to him and ask for what he could give her—not, as she was just now—convulsed with grief; she must come quietly and confidently and with her mind made up. There must be no working upon her emotions, no urgency of his own will over a weaker will; no compulsion such as a strong man can exercise over a weak woman.
He pushed her gently away, and she raised her head, smiling through her tears and murmuringsomething: what was it? Was it "Thanks;" but she did not look him in the face, she dare not meet those narrow blue eyes that were bent upon her.
He stood watching her as she moved lightly to the door. There she turned back, and even then she did not raise her eyes to his face, but she smiled a strange bewildered smile into the air and fled.
It was reallyshewho had conquered, and with such feeble weapons.
She had gone. The door was closed. The Warden was alone.
He looked round the room, at the book-lined walls, at his desk strewn with papers, and then the whole magnitude and meaning of what he had done—came to him!
He took out his watch. It was twenty past eight—all but a minute. In less than twenty minutes he had disposed of and finally settled one of the most important affairs of life. Was this the action of a sane man?
During the last few days he had gradually been drifting towards this, just drifting. He had been dreaming of it all the time, dreaming in that part of his brain where the mind works out its problems underground, waiting until the higher world of consciousness calls for them, and they are flung out into the open daylight—solved. A solution found without real solid premeditation.
Was the solution to his life's problem a good one, or a bad one? Was it true to his past life, or was it false? Can a man successfully live out a plan that he has only dimly outlined in a dream and swiftly finished in a passion of pity?
It was Middleton's duty as host to go into the drawing-room. He must go at once and think afterwards. And yet he lingered. She might not claim him. She too might have been moved only by amomentary emotion! But what right had he to be speculating on the chance of release? It was a bad beginning!
On the floor lay a letter. The Warden had not noticed it before. He picked it up. It was the letter that she had held in her trembling hands.
He stood holding it, and then suddenly he opened the flap and pulled the sheet from its cover. He unfolded it and looked at the signature. Yes, it was from her mother. He folded the paper again and put it back in the envelope.
Then as he stood for a moment, with the letter in his hand, he perceived that his shirt-front was stained—with her tears.
He left the library and went towards his bedroom behind the curtained door. He had the letter in his hand. He caught sight of Louise, Lady Dashwood's maid, near the drawing-room door. The Warden held the letter out to her.
"Please put this letter in Miss Scott's room," he said. "I found it lying on the floor;" and he went back into his room.
Louise had gone to the drawing-room with a handkerchief forgotten by Lady Dashwood. She took the letter and went upstairs to her mistress's room, gazing at the letter as she walked. Now Louise was not a French woman for nothing. A letter—even an open letter—passing between a male and a female, must relate to an affair of the heart. This was interesting—exciting! Louise felt the necessity of thinking the matter out. Here was a pretty young lady, Miss Scott, and here was the Warden, not indeed very young, buttrès très bien, très distingué!Very well, if the young lady was married, then well, naturally something would happen! But she was "Miss," and that was quite other thing. Young unmarried girls must be protected—it is so inla belle France.Louise pulled the envelope apart and drew out the contents. She opened the letter, and searched for the missive between its folds which was destined for the hands of "Miss." There was none. Louise spread out the letter. Her knowledge of English as a spoken language was limited, and as a written language it was an unending puzzle.
She could, however, read the beginning and the end.
"Dear Gwen" ... and "Mother."Hein!
The reason why the letter had been put into her hands was just because she could not read it.
What cunning! Without doubt, there were some additions added by the Warden here and there to the maternal messages, which would have their significance to "Miss." Again, what cunning!
And the Warden, so dignified and so just as he ought to be! Ah, my God, but one never knows!
Louise folded up the letter and replaced it in its envelope.
Doubtless my Lady Dashwood was in the dark. Oh, completely! That goes without saying. Louise had already tidied the room. There was nothing more for her to do. She had been on the point of going down to the servants' quarters. Should she take the letter as directed to the room occupied by "Miss"? That was the momentous question. Now Louise was bound hand and foot to the service of Lady Dashwood. Only for the sake of that lady would Louise have endured the miseries of Oxford and the taciturnity of Robinson, and the impertinence of Robinson's grandson, Robinson aged fifteen, and the stupid solemnity of Mrs. Robinson, the daughter-in-law of Robinson and the widowed mother of the young Robinson.
Louise loved Lady Dashwood. Lady Dashwood was munificent and always amiable, things very rare. Also Louise was a widow and had two children in whom Lady Dashwood took an interest.
ThatMonsieur, the head of the College, should secretly communicate with a "Miss" was a real scandal.Propos d'amourare not for young ladies who are unmarried. The Warden ought to have known better than that—— Ah, poor Lady Dashwood!
Torn between the desire to participate in an interesting affair and her duty not to assist scandals in the family of my Lady Dashwood, Louise stood for some time plunged in painful argument with herself. At last her sense of duty prevailed! She would not deliver the letter. No, not if her life depended on it. The question was—— Ah, this would be what she would do. A brilliant idea had struck her. Louise went to the dressing-table. It was covered with Lady Dashwood's toilet things, all neatly arranged. On the top of the jewel drawers at one side lay two envelopes, letters that had come by the last post and had been put aside hurriedly by Lady Dashwood. Louise lifted these two letters and underneath them placed the letter addressed to Miss Gwendolen Scott.
"Good!" exclaimed Louise to the empty room. "The letter is now in the disposition of the Good God! And the Warden! All that there is of the most as it ought to be! Ah, but it is incredible!"
Louise went to the door and put out the lights. Then she closed the door softly behind her and went downstairs.
Before his maternal aunt had left him Chartcote, the Honourable Bernard Boreham's income had been just sufficient to enable him to live without making himself useful. The Boreham estate in Ireland was burdened with obligations to female relatives who lived in various depressing watering-places in England. Bernard, the second son, had not been sent to a public school or University. He had struggled up as best he might, and like all the members of his family, he had left his beloved country as soon as he possibly could, and had picked up some extra shillings in London by writing light articles of an inflammatory nature for papers that required them. Boreham had had no real practical acquaintance with the world. He had never been responsible for any one but himself. He was a floating cloudlet. Ideas came to him easily—all the more easily because he was scantily acquainted with the mental history of the past. He did not know what had been already thought out and dismissed, nor what had been tried and had failed. The world was new to him—new—and full of errors.
From the moment that Chartcote became his and he was his own master, it occurred to him that he might write a really great book. A book that would make the world conscious of its follies. He felt that it was time that some one—like himself—who could shed the superstitions and the conventions of the past andstep out a new man with new ideas, uncorrupted by kings or priests (or Oxford traditions), and give a lead to the world.
It was, of course, an unfortunate circumstance that Oxford was now so military, so smitten by the war and shorn of her pomp, so empty of academic life. But after the war Boreham meant among other things to study Oxford, and if perfectly frank criticism could help her to a better understanding of her faults in view of the world's requirements—well, it should have that criticism. Boreham had considerable leisure, for apart from his big Book which he began to sketch, he found nothing to do. Every sort of work that others were doing for the war he considered radically faulty, and he had no scheme of his own—at the moment. Besides, he felt that England was not all she ought to be. He did not love England—he only liked living in England.
Boreham had arrived punctually for dinner on that October evening; in fact, he had arrived too early; but he told Lady Dashwood that his watch was fast.
"All the clocks in Oxford are wrong," he said to her, as he stood on the hearthrug in the drawing-room, "and mine is wrong!"
Boreham was tall and fair and wore a fair pointed beard. His features were not easy to describe in detail, they gave one the impression that they had been cut with insufficient premeditation by the hand of his Creator, from some pale fawn-coloured material. He wore a single eyeglass which he stuck into a pale blue eye, mainly as an aid to conversation. With Boreham conversation meant an exposition of his own "ideas." He was disappointed at finding only Lady Dashwood in the drawing-room; but she had been really good natured in asking him to come and meet May Dashwood, so he was "conversing" freely with her when the door opened and Gwendolen Scott camein. Boreham started and put his eyeglass in the same eye again, instead of exercising the other eye. He was agitated. When he saw that it was not May Dashwood who had come in, but a youthful female unknown to him and probably of no conversational significance, he dropped his glass on to his shirt-front, where it made a dull thud. Gwen's face was flushed, and her lips still a little swollen; but there was nothing that betrayed tears to strangers, though Lady Dashwood saw at once that she had been crying. As soon as the introduction was over Gwen sank into a large easy-chair where her slight figure was almost obliterated.
She had got back her self-control. It had not, after all, been so difficult to get it back—for the glow of a new excitement possessed her. For the first time in her life she had succeeded. Until to-day she had had no luck. At a cheap school for the "Education of Daughters of Officers" Gwen had not learnt more than she could possibly help. Her first appearance in the world, this last summer, had been, considering her pretty face, on the whole a disappointment. But now she was successful. Gwen tingled with the comfortable warmth of self-esteem. She looked giddily round the spacious room—was it possible that all this might be hers? It was amazing that luck should have just dropped into her lap.
Boreham had turned again to Lady Dashwood as soon as he had been introduced and had executed the reverential bow that he considered proper, however contemptuously he might feel towards the female he saluted.
"As we were saying," he went on, "Middleton—except to-day—has always been punctual to the minute, by that I mean punctual to the fastest Oxford time. He is the sort of man who is born punctual. Punctually he came into the world. Punctually he willgo out of it. He has never been what I call a really free man. In other words, he is a slave to what's called 'Duty.'"
Here the door opened again, and again Boreham was unable to conceal his vivid curiosity as he turned to see who it was coming in. This time it was the Warden—the Warden in a blameless shirt-front. He had changed in five minutes. He walked in composed as usual. There was not a trace in his face that in the library only a few minutes ago he had been disposing of his future with amazing swiftness.
"Go on, Boreham," said the Warden, giving his guest, along with the glance that serves in Oxford as sufficient greeting to frequenters of Common Room, a slight grasp of the hand because he was not a member of Common Room. The Warden had not heard Boreham's remarks, he merely knew that he had interrupted some exposition of "ideas."
In a flash the Warden saw, without looking at her, that Gwen was there, half hidden in a chair; and Gwen, on her side, felt her heart thump, and was proudly and yet fearfully conscious of every movement of the Warden as he walked across the room and stood on the other side of the hearthrug. "Does he—does that important person belong to me?" she thought. The conviction was overpowering that if that important person did belong to her, and it appeared that he did, she also must be important.
Boreham's appearance did not gain in attractiveness by the proximity of his host. He began again in his rapid rather high voice.
"You see for yourself," he said, turning back to Lady Dashwood: "here he is—the very picture of what is conventionally correct, his features, his manner, before which younger men who are not so correct actually quail. I'm afraid that now he is Warden he has lost the chance of becoming a free man. I hadhopes of one day seeing him carried off his feet by some impulse which fools call 'folly.' If he could have been even once divinely drunk, he might have realised his true self, I am afraid now he is hopeless."
"My dear man, your philosophy of freedom is only suitable for the 'idle rich.' You would be the first person to object to your cook becoming divinely drunk instead of soberly preparing your dinner."
Boreham always ignored an argument that told against him, so he merely continued—
"As it is, Middleton, who might have been magnificent, is bound hand and foot to the service of mere propriety, and will end by saddling himself with some dull wife."
The Warden stood patient and composed while Boreham was talking about him. He took out his watch and glanced at Lady Dashwood.
"I've given May five minutes' grace," she said, and then turned her face again to Boreham. "But why should Jim marry a dull wife? It will be his own fault if he does."
Gwen in her large chair sat stupefied at the word "wife."
"No," said Boreham, emphatically. "It won't be his fault. The best of our sex are daily sacrificed to the most dismal women. Men being in the minority now—dangerously in the minority—are, as all minorities are, imposed upon by the gross majority. Supposing Middleton meets, to speak to, in his whole life, a couple of hundred women here and elsewhere, none of whom are in the least charming; well, then, one out of these two hundred, the one with the most brazen determination to be married, will marry him, and there'll be an end of it. The kindest thing, Lady Dashwood," continued Boreham, "and I speak from the great love I have for Middleton, is for you just to invite with sisterly discrimination some women, notquite unbearable to Middleton, and he, like the Emperor Theophilus, will come into this room with an apple in his hand and present it to one of them. He can make the same remark that Theophilus made to the lady he first approached."
"And what was that?" asked Lady Dashwood. She was amused at finding the conversation turn on the very subject nearest her heart. Even Mr. Boreham was proving himself useful in uttering this blunt warning of dangers ahead.
"His remark was: 'Woman is the source of evil.' And the lady's reply was——"
Both Lady Dashwood and Gwen were gazing intently at Boreham and Boreham was staring fixedly at the ornament in Lady Dashwood's grey hair. No one but the Warden noticed the door open and May Dashwood enter. She was dressed in black and wore no ornaments. She had caught the gist of what Boreham was saying, and she made the most delightful movement of her hands to Middleton that expressed both respectful greeting to him as her host, and an apology for remaining motionless on the threshold of the room, so that she should not break Boreham's story.
"And her reply was," went on the unconscious Boreham, "'But surely also of much good!'"
So that was all! May Dashwood came forward and walked straight up to the Warden. She held out both her hands to him in apology for her behaviour.
"I hope he—whoever he was—did not marry the young woman who made such an obvious retort," she said. "Fancy what the conversation would be like at the breakfast table."
Boreham was too much occupied with his own interesting emotions at the sudden appearance of Mrs. Dashwood to notice what was plain to Lady Dashwoodand Gwendolen Scott, that the Warden seemed wholly taken by surprise.
"He didn't marry her," he said, as he held May Dashwood's hands for a moment and stared down into her upturned face with his narrow eyes. "But," he added, "the story is probably a fake."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Dashwood, as she released her hands. Then she turned to Boreham, who was waiting—a picture of self-consciousness in pale fawn.
Gwen's recently regained self-confidence was already oozing out of every pore of her skin. It didn't matter when the Warden and Mr. Boreham talked queer talk, that was to be expected; but what did matter was this Mrs. Dashwood talking queerly with them. Rubbish she, Gwen, called it. What did that Mrs. Dashwood mean by saying that the retort, "And also of much good," was obvious? What did "obvious" mean? To Gwen the retort seemed profoundly clever—and so true! How was she, Gwen, to cope with this sort of thing? And then there was the Warden already giving this terrible woman his arm and looking at her far too closely.
"Come, Gwen," said Lady Dashwood, "Mr. Boreham must take us both!"
Gwen's head swam. Along with this new and painful sensation had come a sudden recollection of something! That letter of her mother's! It had not been in her hand when she went into her bedroom. No, it had not. Had she dropped it in the library, when the Warden had—— Oh!
"I've lost my handkerchief," murmured the girl, "somewhere——" Her voice was very small and sad, and she looked helplessly round the room.
"Mr. Boreham, stop and help her find it," said Lady Dashwood, "I must go down."
Boreham stood rigidly at the door. He saw his hostess go out and still he did not move.
Gwen looked at him in despair. What she had intended, of course, was to have flown into the library and looked for her letter. How could she now, with Mr. Boreham standing in the way? And that terrible woman had gone off arm-in-arm with the Warden. Gwen stared at Boreham. An idea struck her. She would go into the library—after dinner—before the men came up. But she must pretend to look for her handkerchief for a minute or two.
"Do you call Mrs. Dashwood pretty?" she asked tremulously, not looking at Boreham, but diving her hand into the corners of the chair she had been sitting in. She must find out what men thought of Mrs. Dashwood. She must know the worst—now, when she had the opportunity.
"Pretty!" said Boreham, still motionless at the door. "That's not a useful word. She's alluring."
"Oh!" said Gwen. She had left off thumping the chair, and now walked slowly to him—wide-eyed with anxiety. To Gwen, a man past his youth, wearing a fair beard and fair eyebrows that were stiff and stuck out like spikes, was scarcely a person of sex at all; but still he would probably know what men thought.
"I don't think she is pretty—very," she said, her lips trembling a little as she spoke, and she gazed in a challenging way at Boreham.
"She is the most womanly woman I know," said Boreham. "Middleton is probably finding that out already."
Gwen patted her waistband where it bulged ever so slightly with her handkerchief. "Womanly!" she repeated in a doubtful voice.
"He'll fall in love with her to-day and propose to-morrow. Do him a world of good," said Boreham.
"Propose!" Gwen caught her breath. "But he couldn't—she couldn't—he couldn't—marry!"
"Couldn't marry—I didn't say marry—I said he will propose to-morrow." Boreham laughed a little in his beard.
"I don't understand," stammered the girl. "You mean—she would refuse?"
"No," said Boreham. "It mightn't go as far as that—the whole thing is a matter of words—words—words. It's a part of a man's education to fall in love with Mrs. Dashwood!"
Gwen blinked at him. A piercing thought struck her brain. Spoken words—they didn't count! Words alone didn't clinch the bargain! Words didn't tie a man up to his promise. Was this the "law"? She must get at the actual "law" of the matter. She knew something about love-making, but nothing about the "law."
"Do you mean," she said, and she scarcely recognised her own voice, so great was her concentration of thought and so slowly did she pronounce the enigmatic words, "if he had kissed you as well, he would be obliged to marry one?"
Boreham knitted his brows. "If I was, at this moment to kiss you, my dear lady," he began, "I should not be compelled to marry you. Even the gross injustice meted out to us men by the laws (backed up by Mrs. Grundy) dares not go as far as that. But there is no knowing what new oppression is in store for us—in the future."
"I only mean," stammered Gwen, "ifhe had already said—something."
Boreham simply stared at her. "I am confused," he said. "Confused!"
"Oh, please don't imagine that I meant you," she entreated. "I never for one single instant thought of you. I should never have imagined! I am so sorry!"
And yet this humble apology did not mollify him.Gwen almost felt frightened. Everything seemed going to pieces, and she was no nearer knowing what the legal aspects of her case were.
"Have you found your handkerchief?" Boreham asked, and the spikes in his eyebrows seemed to twitch.
"It was in my band, all the time," said Gwen, smiling deprecatingly. "Oh, what a bother everything was!"
"Then we have wasted precious time for nothing," said Boreham. "All the fun is going on downstairs—come along, Miss Wallace."
Boreham knew her name wasn't Wallace, but Wallace was Scotch and that was near enough, when he was angry.
Gwen went downstairs as if she were in an ugly dream. Her brief happiness and security and pleasure at her own importance was vanishing. This broad staircase that she was descending on Boreham's stiff and rebellious arm; this wall with its panelling and its dim pictures of strange men's faces; these wide doors thrown back through which one went solemnly into the long dining-room; this dining-room itself dim and dignified; all this was going to be hers—only——. Gwendolen, as she emerged into the glow of the long oval table, could see nothing but the face of Mrs. Dashwood, gently brilliant, and the Warden roused to attentive interest. What was Gwen to do? There was nobody whom she could consult. Should she write to her mother? Her mother would scold her! What, then, was she to do? Perhaps she had better write to her mother, and let her see that she had, at any rate, tried her best. And in saying the words to herself "tried her best," Gwen was not speaking the truth even to herself. She had not tried at all; the whole thing had come about accidentally. It had somehow happened!
Instead of going straight to bed that eveningGwen seated herself at the writing-table in her bedroom. She must write a letter to her mother and ask for advice. The letter must go as soon as possible. Gwen knew that if she put it off till the morning, it might never get written. She was always too sleepy to get up before breakfast. In Oxford breakfast for Dons was at eight o'clock, and that was far too early, as it was, for Gwen. Then after breakfast, there was "no time" to do anything, and so on, during the rest of the day.
So Gwen sat at her writing-table and wrote the longest letter she had ever written. Gwen's handwriting was pointed, it was also shaky, and generally ran downhill, or else uphill.
"Dear Mummy,"Please write and tell me what to do? I've done all I could, but everything is in a rotten muddle. This evening I was crying, crying a little at your letter—I really couldn't help it—but anyhow it turned out all right—and the Warden suddenly came along the passage and saw me. He took me into his library, I don't know how it all happened, Mummy, but he put his arms round me and told me to come to him if I wanted a home. He was sweet, and I naturally thought this was true, and I said 'Yes' and 'Thanks.' There wasn't time for more, because of dinner. But a Mr. Boarham, who is a sort of cousin of Dr. Middleton, says that proposals are all words and that you needn't be married. What am I to do? I don't know if I am really engaged or not—because the Warden hasn't said anything more—and suppose he doesn't—— Isn't it rotten? Do write and tell me what to do, for I feel so queer. What makes me worried is Mrs. Dashwood, a widow, talks so much. At dinner the Warden seemed so much taken up by her—quite different. But then after dinner it wasn't like that.We sat in the drawing-room all the time and at least the men smoked and Lady Dashwood and me, but not Mrs. Dashwood, who said she was Early Victorian, and ought to have died long ago. She worked. Lady Dashwood said that she smoked because she was a silly old heathen, and that made me feel beastly. It wasn't fair—but Lady Dashwood is often rather nasty. But afterwardshewas nice, and asked me to play my reverie by Slapovski. I have never forgotten it, Mummy, though I haven't been taught it for six months. I am telling you everything so that you know what has happened. Well, Mr. Borham said, 'For God's sake don't let's have any music.' He said that like he always does. It is very rude. Of course I refused to play, and the Warden was so nice, and he looked at me very straight and did not look at Mrs. Dashwood now. I think it must be all right. He sat in an armchair opposite us, and put his elbow on the arm and held the back of his neck—he does that, and smoked again and stared all the time at the carpet by Mrs. Dashwood's shoes, and never looked at her, but talked a lot. I can't understand what they say, and it is worse now Mrs. D. is here. Only once I saw him look up at her, and then he had that severe look. So I don't think any harm has happened. You know what I mean, Mummie. I was afraid he might like her. I tell you everything so as you can judge and advise me, for I could not tell all this to old Lady Dashwood, of course. Lady Dashwood says smoking cigars in the drawing-room is good for the furniture!!! I thought it very disgusting of Mr. Borham to say, 'For God's sake.' He used not to believe in God, and even now he hasn't settled whether there is a God. We are all to go to Chartcote House for lunch. There is to be a Bazaar—I forget what for, somewhere. I have no money except half-a-crown. I have not paid for my laundry, so I can leave that in a drawer. Now,dear Mummy, do write at once and say exactly what I am to do, and tell me if I am engaged or not.
"Dear Mummy,
"Please write and tell me what to do? I've done all I could, but everything is in a rotten muddle. This evening I was crying, crying a little at your letter—I really couldn't help it—but anyhow it turned out all right—and the Warden suddenly came along the passage and saw me. He took me into his library, I don't know how it all happened, Mummy, but he put his arms round me and told me to come to him if I wanted a home. He was sweet, and I naturally thought this was true, and I said 'Yes' and 'Thanks.' There wasn't time for more, because of dinner. But a Mr. Boarham, who is a sort of cousin of Dr. Middleton, says that proposals are all words and that you needn't be married. What am I to do? I don't know if I am really engaged or not—because the Warden hasn't said anything more—and suppose he doesn't—— Isn't it rotten? Do write and tell me what to do, for I feel so queer. What makes me worried is Mrs. Dashwood, a widow, talks so much. At dinner the Warden seemed so much taken up by her—quite different. But then after dinner it wasn't like that.We sat in the drawing-room all the time and at least the men smoked and Lady Dashwood and me, but not Mrs. Dashwood, who said she was Early Victorian, and ought to have died long ago. She worked. Lady Dashwood said that she smoked because she was a silly old heathen, and that made me feel beastly. It wasn't fair—but Lady Dashwood is often rather nasty. But afterwardshewas nice, and asked me to play my reverie by Slapovski. I have never forgotten it, Mummy, though I haven't been taught it for six months. I am telling you everything so that you know what has happened. Well, Mr. Borham said, 'For God's sake don't let's have any music.' He said that like he always does. It is very rude. Of course I refused to play, and the Warden was so nice, and he looked at me very straight and did not look at Mrs. Dashwood now. I think it must be all right. He sat in an armchair opposite us, and put his elbow on the arm and held the back of his neck—he does that, and smoked again and stared all the time at the carpet by Mrs. Dashwood's shoes, and never looked at her, but talked a lot. I can't understand what they say, and it is worse now Mrs. D. is here. Only once I saw him look up at her, and then he had that severe look. So I don't think any harm has happened. You know what I mean, Mummie. I was afraid he might like her. I tell you everything so as you can judge and advise me, for I could not tell all this to old Lady Dashwood, of course. Lady Dashwood says smoking cigars in the drawing-room is good for the furniture!!! I thought it very disgusting of Mr. Borham to say, 'For God's sake.' He used not to believe in God, and even now he hasn't settled whether there is a God. We are all to go to Chartcote House for lunch. There is to be a Bazaar—I forget what for, somewhere. I have no money except half-a-crown. I have not paid for my laundry, so I can leave that in a drawer. Now,dear Mummy, do write at once and say exactly what I am to do, and tell me if I am engaged or not.
"Your affectionate daughter,"Gwen.
"I like the Warden ever so much, and partly because he does not wear a beard. I feel very excited, but am trying not to. Mrs. D. is to stay a whole week, till I go on the 3rd."
Gwen laid down her pen and sat looking at the sheet of paper before her. She had told her mother "everything." She had omitted nothing, except that her mother's letter had dropped somewhere, either in the library or the staircase, and she could not find it again. If it had dropped in the library, somebody had picked it up. Supposing the Warden had picked it up and read it? The clear sharp understanding of "honour" possessed by the best type of Englishman and Englishwoman was not possessed by Gwen—it has not been acquired by the Belindas of Society or of the Slums. But no, Gwen felt sure that the Warden hadn't found it, or he would have been very, very angry. Then who had picked it up?
If Pilate had uttered the sardonic remark "What is truth?" in Boreham's presence, he would certainly have compelled that weary official to wait for definite enlightenment. Boreham would have explained to him that although Absolute Truth (if there is such a thing) lies, like our Destiny, in the lap of the gods, he, Boreham, had a thoroughly reliable stock of useful truths with which he could supply any inquirer. Indeed to Boreham, the discussing of truths was a comparatively simple matter. Truths were of two kinds. Firstly, they were what he, himself, was convinced of at the moment of speaking; and secondly, they werenotwhat the man next him believed in. Boreham found intolerable any assertion made by people he knew. He knew them!Voila!But he felt he could very fairly well trust opinions expressed by the native inhabitants of—say Pomerania—or still better—India.
Boreham had already some acquaintances in Oxford to whom he spoke, as he said himself, "frankly and fearlessly," and who tolerated him, whenever they had time to listen to him, because he was entirely harmless and merely tiresome. But he was not surprised (it had occurred before) that the Warden refused his invitation to lunch at Chartcote. The ladies had accepted; and when Boreham said "the ladies," on this occasion he was thinking solely ofMrs. Dashwood. Lady Dashwood had accepted the invitation because it was given verbally. She made no purely social engagements. The Warden, himself, did not entertain during the war, and the only engagements were those of business, or of hospitality of an academic nature.
The day following May Dashwood's arrival was entirely uneventful. The Warden was mostly invisible. May was as bright as she had been on her arrival. Gwen went about wide-eyed and wistful, and spoke spasmodically. Lady Dashwood was serene and satisfied. A shy Don accompanied by a very nice, untidy wife, appeared at lunch, and they were introduced by the Warden as Mr. and Mrs. Stockwell. Mr. Stockwell was struck dumb at finding himself seated next to Mrs. Dashwood, a type of female little known to him. But May bravely taking him in hand, he recovered his powers of speech and became epigrammatic and sparkling. This round-shouldered, spectacled scholar, with a large nose and receding chin, poured out brilliant observations, subtile and suggestive, and had an apparently inexhaustible store of the literature of Europe. He sat sideways in his chair and spoke into May's sympathetic ear, giving an occasional swift appealing glance at the Warden, who came within the range of his vision.
How Stockwell ate his food was impossible to discover. He seemed to give automatic twiddles to his fork and apparently swallowed something afterwards, for when Robinson's underling, Robinsonpetit fils, removed Stockwell's plates, they contained only wreckage.
The Warden, aided by Lady Dashwood, struggled courteously with Mrs. Stockwell. She was obliged to talk across Gwendolen, who spent her time silently observing Mrs. Dashwood.
Mrs. Stockwell had pathetic pretensions tointellectuality, based on a masterly acquaintance with the names of her husband's books and the fact that she lived in the academic circle. She had drooped visibly at the first sight of her hostess and Mrs. Dashwood, but was soon put at her ease by Lady Dashwood, who deftly drew her away from vague hints at the possession of learning into talk about her children. Gwen, watching the Warden and Mrs. Dashwood across Mrs. Stockwell's imitation lace front, could not be moved to speech. To any one in the secret there was written on her face two absorbing questions: "Am I engaged or not?" "Is she trying to oust me?"
The Warden's enigmatic eyes held no information in them. He looked at her gravely when he did look, and—that was all. Washewaiting to know whether he was engaged or not? Gwen doubted it. He would be sure to know everything. He would know. Think of all those books in the library! Supposing he had found that letter—suppose hehadread it? No, if hehad, he would have looked not merely grave, but angry!
When the ladies rose from the table, Stockwell rose too, reluctantly and as if waking from a pleasant dream. He stared in a startled way at the Warden, who moved to open the door; he looked as if about to spring—then refrained, and resigning himself to the unmistakable decision of the Fates, he remained standing, staring down at the table-cloth through his spectacles, with his cheeks flushed and his heart glad.
Mrs. Stockwell passed out of the room in front of May Dashwood, gratified, warm and trying to conceal the backs of her boots.
Finally the Stockwells went away, and then Lady Dashwood took her niece to the Magdalen walk. There among the last shreds of autumn, and in that muzzy golden sunshine of Oxford, they walked and talked with the constraint of Gwen's presence.
At tea two or three people called, but the Warden did not appear even for a hasty cup. At dinner an old pupil of the Warden's—lamed by the war—occupied the attention of the little party.
Gwen's spirits rose at the sight of a really young man, but she remembered her mother's admonition and did not make any attempt to attract his attention beyond opening her eyes now and then suddenly and widely and with an ecstasy of interest at some invisible object just above his head. Whether the youthful warrior's imagination was excited by this "passage of arms" Gwen never knew, because the Warden took his pupil off to the library after dinner, and did not even bring him into the drawing-room to bid farewell.
In the quiet of the drawing-room Gwen fell into thought. She wondered whether the Warden expected her to come and knock on his library door and walk in and tell him that she really did want to be married to him? Or had he read that letter and——? Why, she had thought all this over a hundred times, and was no farther on than she had been before.
After playing the Reverie by Slapovski, which Mrs. Dashwood had not yet heard, and which she expressed a desire to hear, Gwen settled down to knitting a sock. She had been knitting that sock for five months. It was surprising how small the foot was, at least the toe part; the heel indeed was ample. She had followed the directions with great care, and yet the stupid thing would come out wrong. It was irritating to see Mrs. Dashwood knitting away at such a pace. It made Gwen giddy to look at her hands. Lady Dashwood took up a book and read passages aloud. This was so intolerably dull that Gwen found it difficult to keep her eyes open. It is always more tiring when nothing is going on than when plenty of things are going on!
Lady Dashwood had just finished reading a passage and looked up to make a remark to May Dashwood, when she became aware of Gwen's face.
"My dear, you looked just like a melancholy peach. Go to bed!"
Gwen smiled and tumbled her pins into her knitting. She rose and said "Good night," glad to be released. Outside the drawing-room she stood holding her breath to hear if there was any sound audible from the library. She heard nothing. She moved over the soft carpet and listened again, at the door. She could hear the Warden's deep, masculine voice—like the vibration of an organ, and then a higher voice, but what they said Gwen could not tell. She turned away and went up to bed. She was beginning to lose that feeling of not being afraid of the Warden. He was becoming more and more what he had been at first, an impressive and alarming personage, a human being entirely remote from her understanding and experience. At moments during dinner when she had glanced at him, he had seemed to her to be like a handsomely carved figure animated by some living force completely unknown to her. That such an incomprehensible being should become her husband was surely unlikely—if not impossible! Gwen's thoughts became more and more confused. Notwithstanding this confusion in what (if compelled to describe it) she would have called her soul, she closed her eyes and settled upon her pillow. She was conscious that she was disappointed and not happy. Then she suddenly became indifferent to her fate—saw in her mind's eye a hat—it absorbed her. The hat was lying on a chair. It was trimmed like some other hat. Then the hat disappeared, and Gwen was asleep.
As soon as Gwendolen had left the drawing-room Lady Dashwood closed her book and looked at her niece.
"Now," said Lady Dashwood, "I begin to think that I was unnecessarily alarmed about Jim. But it may be because you are here—giving me moral support." Lady Dashwood spoke the words "moral support" with great firmness. Having once said it and seen that it was wrong, she meant to stick to it.
"I wonder," began Mrs. Dashwood, and then she remained silent and looked hard at her knitting.
Lady Dashwood still stared at her niece. But May did not conclude her sentence, if indeed she had meant to say any more.
"Why, you haven't noticed anything?" asked Lady Dashwood.
"Nothing!" said May, and she knitted on.
"To-day," said Lady Dashwood, "Jim has been practically invisible except at meals, but you've no idea how busy he is just now. All one's old ideas are in the melting-pot," she went on, "and Jim has schemes. He is full of plans. He thinks there is much to be done, in Oxford, with Oxford—nothing revolutionary—but a lot that is evolutionary."
Mrs. Dashwood dropped her knitting to listen, though she could have heard quite well without doing this.
"Imagine!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood, with a little burst of anger, "what a man like Jim, a scholar, a man of business, an organiser, what on earth he would do with a wife like Gwendolen Scott! The idea is absurd."
"The absurd often happens," said May, and as she said this she took up her knitting again with such a jerk that her ball of wool tumbled to the floor and began rolling; and being a tight ball it rolled some distance sideways from May's chair in the direction of the far distant door. She gave the wool a little tug, but the ball merely shook itself, turned over and released still more wool.
"Very well, remain there if you prefer that place," said May, and as she spoke there came a slight noise at the door.
Both ladies looked to see who was coming in. It was the Warden. He held a cigar in his hand, a sign (Lady Dashwood knew it) that he intended merely to bid them "Good night," and retire again to his library. But he now stood in the half-light with his hand on the door, and looked towards the glow of the hearth where the two ladies sat alone, each lighted by a tall, electric candle stand on the floor. And as he looked at this little space of light and warmth he hesitated.
Then he closed the door behind him and came in.
The Warden came slowly towards them over the wide space of carpeted floor.
Lady Dashwood, who knew every passing change in his face and manner (they were photographed over and over again in every imaginable style in her book of life), noticed that the sight of herself and May alone, that is, without Gwen—had made him decide to come in. She drew her own conclusions and smiled.
"When you pass that ball of wool, pick it up, Jim," she said.
She spoke too late, however, and the Warden kicked the ball with one foot, and sent it rolling under a chair. It took the opportunity of flinging itself round one leg, and tumbling against the second. With its remaining strength it rolled half way round the third leg, and then lay exhausted.
"I'm not going to apologise," said the Warden, in his most courteous tones.
"You needn't do that, my dear, if you don't want to," said Lady Dashwood. "But pick up the ball, please."
"If I pick the ball up," said the Warden, "the result will be disastrous to somebody."
He looked at the ball and at the chair, and then, putting his cigar between his teeth, he lifted the chair from the labyrinth of wool and placed it out of mischief. Then he picked up the ball and stood holding it in hishand. Who was the "somebody"? To whom did it belong? It was obvious to whom it belonged! A long line of wool dropped from the ball to the carpet. There it described a foolish pattern of its own, and then from one corner of that pattern the line of wool ran straight to Mrs. Dashwood's hands. She was sitting there, pretending that she didn't know that she was very, very slowly and deliberately jerking out the very vitals of that pattern, in fact disembowelling it. Then the Warden pretended to discover suddenly that it was Mrs. Dashwood's ball, and this discovery obliged him to look at her, and she, without glancing at him, slightly nodded her head, very gravely. Lady Dashwood grasped her book and pretended to read it.
"I suppose I must clear up this mess," said the Warden, as articulately as a man can who is holding a cigar between his teeth.
He began to wind up the ball.
"How beautifully you are winding it!" said May Dashwood, without looking up from her knitting.
The Warden cleared the pattern from the floor, and now a long line of wool stretched tautly from his hands to those of Mrs. Dashwood.
"Please stop winding," she said quietly, and still she did not look up, though she might have easily done so for she had left off knitting.
The Warden stopped, but he stood looking at her as if to challenge her eyes. Then, as she remained obstinately unmoved, he came towards her chair and dropped the ball on her lap.
"You couldn't know I was winding it beautifully because you never looked."
"I knew without looking," said May. "I took for granted that you did everything well."
"If you will look now," said the Warden, "you will see how crookedly I've done it. So much for flattery."
He stood looking down at her bent headwith its gold-brown hair lit up to splendour by the electric light behind her. Her face was slightly in shadow. The Warden stood so long that Lady Dashwood was seized with an agreeable feeling of embarrassment. May Dashwood was apparently unconscious of the figure beside her. But she raised her eyebrows. Her eyebrows were often slightly raised as if inquiring into the state of the world with sympathy tinged with surprise. She raised her eyebrows instead of making any reply, as if she said: "I could make a retort, but I am far too busy with more important matters."
The Warden at last moved, and putting a chair between the two ladies he seated himself exactly opposite the glowing fire and the portrait above it. Leaning back, he smoked in silence for a few moments looking straight in front of him for the most part, only now and then turning his eyes to Mrs. Dashwood, just to find out if her eyebrows were still raised.
Lady Dashwood began smiling at her book because she had discovered that she held it upside down.
"You were interested in Stockwell?" said the Warden suddenly. "He is doing multifarious things now. He is an accomplished linguist, and we couldn't manage without him—besides he is over military age by a long way."
Lady Dashwood felt quite sure that his silence had been occupied by the Warden in thinking of May, so that his question, "You were interested," etc., was merely the point at which his thoughts broke into words.
"I was very much interested in him," said May. "It was like reading a witty book—only much more delightful."
"Stockwell is always worth listening to," said the Warden, "but he is sometimes very silent. He needs the right sort of audience to draw him out. Twoor three congenial men—or one sympathetic woman." Here the Warden paused and looked away from May Dashwood, then he added: "I'm obliged to go to Cambridge to-morrow. You will be at Chartcote and you will get some amusement out of Boreham. You find everybody interesting?" He turned again and looked at her—this time so searchingly that a little colour rose in May Dashwood's cheek.
"Oh, not everybody," she said. "I wish I could!"
"My dear May," said Lady Dashwood, briskly seizing this brilliant opportunity of pointing the moral and adorning the tale, "even you can't pretend to be interested in little Gwendolen, though you have done your best. Now that you have seen something of her, what do you think of her?"
"Very pretty," said May Dashwood, and she became busy again with her work.
"Exactly," said Lady Dashwood. "If she were plain even Belinda would not have the impertinence to deposit her on people's doorsteps in the way she does."
The Warden took his cigar out of his mouth, as if he had suddenly remembered something that he had forgotten. He laid his hands on the arms of his chair and seemed about to rise.
"You're not going, Jim!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood. "I thought you had come to talk to us. We have been doing our duty since dawn of day, and this is May's little holiday, you know. Stop and talk nicely to us. Do cheer us up!" Her voice became appealing.
The Warden rose from his chair and stood with one hand resting on the back of it as if about to make some excuse for going away. Except for the glance, necessitated by courtesy, that May Dashwood gave the Warden when he entered, she had kept her eyes obstinately upon her work. Now she looked up and met his eyes, only for a moment.
"I'm not going," he said, "but I find the fire too hot. Excuse me if I move away. It has got muggy and warm—Oxford weather!"
"Open one of the windows," said Lady Dashwood. "I'm sure May and I shall be glad of it."
He moved away and walked slowly down the length of the room. Going behind the heavy curtains he opened a part of the casement and then drew aside one of the curtains slightly. Then he slowly came back to them in silence.
This silence that followed was embarrassing, so embarrassing that Lady Dashwood broke into it urgently with the first subject that she could think of. "Tell May about the Barber's ghost, Jim."
"Where does he appear?" asked May, interestedly, but without looking up. "What part of the college?"
"In the library," said the Warden.
"And at the witching hour of midnight, I suppose?" said May.
"Birds of ill omen, I believe, appear at night," said the Warden. "All Souls College ought to have had an All Souls' ghost, but it hasn't, it has only its 'foolish Mallard.'"
"And if he does appear," said May, "what apology are you going to offer him for the injustice of your predecessor in the eighteenth century?"
The Warden turned and stood looking back across the room at the warm space of light and the two women sitting in it, with the firelight flickering between them.
"If I were to make myself responsible for all the misdemeanours of the Reverend Charles Langley," he said, "I should have my hands full;" and he came slowly towards them as he spoke. "You have only to look at Langley's face, over the mantelpiece, and you will see what I mean."
May Dashwood glanced up at the portrait and smiled.
"Do you admire our Custos dilectissimus?" he asked.
The lights were below the level of the portrait, but the hard handsome face with its bold eyes, was distinctly visible. He was looking lazily watchful, listening sardonically to the conversation about himself.
"I admire the artist who painted his portrait," said May.
"Yes, the artist knew what he was doing when he painted Langley," said the Warden. He seemed now to have recovered his ease, and stood leaning his arms on the back of the chair he had vacated. "Your idea is a good one," he went on. "I don't suppose it has occurred to any Warden since Langley's time that a frank and pleasant apology might lay the Barber's ghost for ever. Shall I try it?" he asked, looking at his guest.
"My dear," said Lady Dashwood slowly, "I wish you wouldn't even joke about it—I dislike it. I wish people wouldn't invent ghost stories," she went on. "They are silly, and they are often mischievous. I wish you wouldn't talk as if you believed it."
"It was you, Lena, who brought up the subject," said Middleton. "But I won't talk about him if you dislike it. You know that I am not a believer in ghosts."
Lady Dashwood nodded her head approvingly, and began turning more pages of her book.
"I sometimes wonder," said the Warden, and now he turned his face towards May Dashwood—"I wonder if men like Langley really believed in a future life?"
May looked up at the portrait, but was silent.
"The eighteenth century was not tormented with the question as we are now!" said the Warden, and again he looked at the auburn head and the dark lashes hiding the downcast eyes. "Those who doubt,"he said slowly and tentatively, "whether after all the High Gods want us—those who doubt whether there are High Gods—even those doubt with regret—now." He waited for a response and May Dashwood suddenly raised her eyes to his.
"There is no truculence in modern unbelief," he said, "it is a matter of passionate regret. And belief has become a passionate hope."
Lady Dashwood knew that not a word of this was meant for her. She disliked all talk about the future world. It made her feel dismal. Her life had been spent in managing first her father, then her brother, and now her husband, and incidentally many of her friends.
Some people dislike having plans made for them, some endure it, some positively like it, and for those who liked it, Lady Dashwood made extensive plans. Her brain worked now almost automatically in plans. For herself she had no plans, she was the planner. But her plans were about this world. To the "other world" Lady Dashwood felt secretly inimical; that "unknown" lurking in the future, would probably, not so long hence, engulf her husband, leaving her, alas! still on this side—with no heart left for making any more plans.
If she had been alone with the Warden he would not have mentioned the "future life," nor would he have spoken of the "High Gods." He knew her mind too well. Was he probing the mind of May Dashwood? Either he was deliberately questioning her, or there was something in her presence that drew from him his inmost thoughts. Lady Dashwood felt a pang of indignation at herself for "being in the way" when to be "out of the way" at such a moment was absolutely necessary. She must leave these two people alone together—now—at this propitious moment. What should she do? She began casting about wildlyin her brain for a plan of escape that would not be too obvious in its intention. The Warden had never been with May alone for five minutes. To-morrow would be a blank day—there was Chartcote first and then when they returned the Warden would be still away and very probably would not be visible that evening.