"There can be no cohesion, no progress in the world, no hope for the future of man, if men break their word; if there is no such thing as inviolable honour," the Warden said to himself, just as he had said before. "After all, as long as honour is left, one has a right to live, to struggle on, to endure."
Mrs. Potten found that it "paid" to do her own shopping, and she did it once every week, on Friday. For this purpose she was compelled to use her car. This grieved her. Her extreme desire to save petrol would have been more patriotic if she had not availed herself, on every possible occasion, of using other people's petrol, or, so to speak, other people's oats.
She had gone to the Sale of work in Boreham's gig, but there was not much room in it for miscellaneous parcels, so she was obliged to come into Oxford on the following morning as usual and do her regular shopping.
Mrs. Potten's acquaintance with the University consisted in knowing a member of it here and there, and in accepting invitations to any public function which did not involve the expenditure of her own money. No Greenleafe Potten had ever given any endowment to Oxford, nor, for the matter of that, had any Squire of Chartcote ever spent a penny for the advancement of learning. Indeed, the old County had been mostly occupied in preserving itself from gradual extinction, and the new County, the Nouveaux Riches, had been mainly occupied in the dissipation of energy.
But Mrs. Potten had given the Potten revenues a new lease of life. Not only did she make a point of not reducing her capital, but she was increasing it year by year. She did this by systematic and often minuteeconomies (which is the true secret of economy). The surface of her nature was emotional, enclosing a core of flint, so that when she (being short-sighted) dropped things about in moments of excitement, agreeable or disagreeable, she made such losses good by drawing in the household belt. If she inadvertently dropped a half-crown piece down a grating while exchanging controversial remarks with a local tradesman, or mixed up a note with her pocket handkerchief and mislaid both when forced to find a subscription to some pious object, or if she left a purse containing one shilling and fivepence behind her on a chair in the agitation of meeting a man whom she admired (a man like the Warden, for instance); when such misfortunes happened she made them up—somehow!
Knowing her own weakness, she armed herself against it, by never carrying money about with her, except on rare occasions. When she travelled, her maid carried the money (with her head as the price of it).
This Friday morning, therefore, Mrs. Potten had a business duty before her, she had to squeeze ten shillings out of the weekly bills—a matter difficult in times of peace and more difficult in war time. It was a difficulty she meant to overcome.
Now on this Friday morning, after the Sale, Mrs. Potten motored into Oxford rather earlier than usual. She intended going to the Lodgings at King's before doing her shopping. Her reason for going to the Lodgings was an interesting one. She had just had a letter from Lady Belinda Scott, informing her that, even if she had been able to invite Gwendolen for Monday, Gwendolen could not accept the invitation, as the dear child was going to stay on at the Lodgings indefinitely. She was engaged to be married to the Warden! At this point in the letter Mrs. Potten put the paper upon the breakfast table and felt that the world was grey. Mrs. Potten liked men she admiredto be bachelors or else widowers, either would do. She liked to feel that if only she had been ten years younger, and had not been so exclusively devoted to the memory of her husband, things might have—— She never allowed herself to state definitely, even to herself, what they might have——, but as long as they might have——, there was over the world in which Mrs. Potten moved and thought a subtle veil of emotional possibilities.
So he was engaged! And what exasperated Mrs. Potten, as she read on, was Lady Belinda's playful hints that Lady Dashwood (dear old thing!) had manœuvred Gwendolen's visit in the first instance, and then kept her firmly a prisoner till the knot was tied. Hadn't it been clever? Then as to the Warden, he was madly, romantically in love, and what could a mother do but resign herself to the inevitable? It wasn't what she had hoped for Gwen! It was very, very different—very! She must not trust herself to speak on that subject because she had given her consent and the thing was done, and she meant to make the best of it loyally.
With this news surging in her head Mrs. Potten raced along the moist roadways towards the ancient and sacred city.
Lena ought to have told her about this engagement when they were sitting together in the rooms at Christ Church. It wasn't the right thing for an old friend to have preserved a mysterious silence, unless (Mrs. Potten was a woman with her wits about her) the engagement had been not Lady Dashwood's plan, but exclusively Belinda's plan and the daughter's plan, and the Warden had been "caught"!
"A liar," said Mrs. Potten, as she stared gloomily out of the open window, "is always a liar!"
Mrs. Potten rang the door-bell at the Lodging and waited for the answer with much warmth ofinterest. Suppose Lena was not at home? What should she do? She must thrash out this matter. Lena would be certain to be at home, it was so early!
Shewasat home!
Mrs. Potten walked upstairs, her mind agitated with mingled emotions, and also the hope of meeting the Warden, incidentally. But she did not meet the Warden. He was not either coming up or going down, and Mrs. Potten found herself alone in the drawing-room.
She could not sit down, she walked up to the fireplace and stared through her glasses for a moment at the portrait. It was quite true that the man was a very good-looking Warden! Yes, but scarcely the sort of person she would have thought suitable to look after young men; and then she walked away to the window. She was framing in her mind the way in which she should open the subject of her call at this early hour. She almost started when she heard the door click, and turned round to see Lady Dashwood coming towards her.
"Dear one, how tired you look!" said Mrs. Potten; "and I really ought not to have come at this unholy hour——"
"It's not so early," said Lady Dashwood. "You know work begins in this house at eight o'clock in the morning."
"So much the better," said Mrs. Potten. "I don't like the modern late hours. In old days our Prime Ministers were up at six in the morning attending to their correspondence. When are they up now, I should like to know? Well," she added, "I have come to offer you my congratulations. I got a letter this morning from Lady Belinda, telling me all about it. No, I won't sit down, I merely ran in for a moment."
Lady Dashwood did not smile. She simply repeated: "From Belinda, telling you all about it!"
Mrs. Potten noted the sarcasm underlying the remark.
"Humph!" said Mrs. Potten. "And you, my dear, said nothing yesterday, though we sat together for half an hour."
"They were not engaged till yesterday evening," said Lady Dashwood.
"Belinda writing yesterday speaks of this engagement having already taken place," said Mrs. Potten; "but, of course, she is wrong."
"Yes," said Lady Dashwood.
"Ah!" cried Mrs. Potten, nodding her head up and down once or twice.
"Jim has gone to town this morning," said Lady Dashwood.
"To buy a ring?" said Mrs. Potten. "Well, I really ought to have brought you Lady Belinda's letter to read. She thinks you have got your heart's desire. That'sherway of looking at it."
Lady Dashwood made no answer.
"I never think lies are amusing," said Mrs. Potten, "when you know they are lies. But you see, you never said a word. Well, well, so Dr. Middleton is engaged!"
"Yes, engaged," repeated Lady Dashwood.
"I'm afraid you're tired," said Mrs. Potten. "You did too much yesterday."
"I'm tired," said Lady Dashwood.
"I always expected," said Mrs. Potten, "that the Warden would have found some nice, steady, capable country rector's daughter. But I suppose, being a man as well as a Warden, he fell in love with a pretty face, eh?" and Mrs. Potten moved as if to go. "Well, she is a lucky girl."
"Very lucky," said Lady Dashwood.
Then Mrs. Potten stared closely with her short-sighted eyes into her friend's face and saw such resigned miseries there that Mrs. Potten felt a stirring movementof those superficial emotions of which we have already spoken.
"I could have wept for her, my dear," said Mrs. Potten, addressing an imaginary companion as she went through the court of the Warden's Lodgings to the car, which she had left standing in the street. "I could have wept for her and for the Warden—poor silly man—and he looks so wise," she added incredulously. "And," she went on, "she wouldn't say a word against the girl or against Belinda. Too proud, I suppose."
Just as she was getting into the car Harding was passing. He stopped, and in his best manner informed her that his wife had told him that the proceeds of the Sale amounted to ninety-three pounds ten shillings and threepence.
"Very good," said Mrs. Potten; "excellent!"
"And we are much indebted to our kind friends who patronised the Sale."
Mrs. Potten thought of her Buckinghamshire collar and the shilling pincushion that she need not have bought.
"I shall tell my wife," said Harding, with much unction, "that you think it very satisfactory."
It did indeed seem to Mrs. Potten (whose income was in thousands) that ninety-three pounds, ten shillings and threepence was a very handsome sum for the purpose of assisting fifty or sixty young mothers of the present generation.
But she had little time to think of this for just by her, walking past her from the Lodgings, came Miss Gwendolen Scott. Now, what was Mrs. Potten to do? Why, congratulate her, of course! The thing had to be done! She called to Gwendolen, who came to the side of the car all blushes.
"She's pleased—that's plain," said Mrs. Potten to herself.
But Mrs. Potten was mistaken. Gwendolen's vivid colour came not from the cause which Mrs. Potten imagined. Gwendolen's colour came simply from alarm at the sight of Mrs. Potten and Mr. Harding speaking to one another, and this alarm was not lessened when Mrs. Potten exclaimed—
"Mr. Harding has been telling me that you made ninety-three pounds, ten shillings and threepence from the Sale?"
"Oh, did we?" murmured Gwendolen, and her colour came and went away.
"We did, thanks to Mrs. Potten's purchases," said Harding, with obsequious playfulness, and he took his leave.
Then Mrs. Potten leaned over the car towards Gwendolen and whispered—
"I was waiting till he had gone, as I don't know if you intend all Oxford to know——"
Gwendolen's lips were pouted into a terrified expression.
"Your engagement, I mean," explained Mrs. Potten.
Gwendolen breathed again, and now she laughed. Oh, why had she been so frightened? That silly little affair of yesterday was over, it was dead and buried! It was absolutely safe, and here was the first real proper congratulations and acknowledgment of her importance.
"You've got a charming man, very charming," said Mrs. Potten.
Gwendolen admitted that she had, and then Mrs. Potten waved her hand and was gone.
That morning, when Gwendolen had come down to breakfast, she wondered how she was going to be received, and whether she would have to wait again for recognition as the future Mrs. Middleton. Breakfast had been put half an hour later.
She had found Lady Dashwood and Mrs. Dashwood already at breakfast. The Warden had had breakfast alone a little before eight. Lady Dashwood called to her and, when she came near, kissed her, and said very quietly—
"The Warden has told me."
And then Mrs. Dashwood smiled and stretched out her hand and said: "I have been allowed to hear the news."
And Gwendolen had looked at them both and said: "Thanks ever so much. I can scarcely believe it, only I know it's true!"
However, the glamour of the situation was gone because the Warden's seat was empty. He could be heard in the hall; the taxi could be heard and the door slamming, and he never came in to say "Good-bye"! Still it was all exhilarating and wonderfully full of hope and promise, and mysterious to a degree!
The conversation at breakfast was not about herself, but that did not matter, she was occupied with happy thoughts. Now all this, everything she looked at and everything she happened to touch, was hers. Everything was hers from the silver urn down to the very salt spoons. The cup that Lady Dashwood was just raising to her lips was hers, Gwendolen's.
And now as she walked along Broad Street, after leaving Mrs. Potten, how gay the world seemed—how brilliant! Even the leaden grey sky was joyful! To Gwendolen there was no war, no sorrow, no pain! There was no world beyond, no complexity of moral forces, no great piteous struggle for an ideal, no "Christ that is to be!" She was engaged and was going shopping!
It was, however, a pity that she had only ten shillings. That would not get a really good umbrella. Oh, look at those perfectly ducky gloves in the window they were only eight and elevenpence!
Gwendolen stared at the window. Stopping to look at shop windows had been strictly forbidden by her mother, but her dear mother was not there! So Gwendolen peered in intently. What about getting those gloves instead of the umbrella?
She marched into the shop, rather bewildered with her own thoughts. The gloves were shown her by the same woman who had served Lady Dashwood a day or two ago, and who recognised her and smiled respectfully. The gloves were sweet; the gauntlets were exactly what she preferred to any others. And the colour was right. Gwendolen was fingering her purse when the shopwoman said—
"Do you want to pay for them, or shall I enter them, miss?"
Gwendolen's brain worked. She was now definitely engaged, and in a few weeks no doubt would be Mrs. Middleton; after that a bill of eight and elevenpence would be a trifle.
"Enter them, please," said Gwendolen, and she surprised herself by hearing her own voice asking for the umbrella department.
After this, problems that had in the past appeared insoluble, arranged themselves without any straining effort on her part; they just straightened themselves out and went "right there."
She looked at a plain umbrella for nine and sixpence, and then examined one at fifteen and eleven. Thereupon she was shown another at twenty-five shillings, which was more respectable looking and had a nice top. It was clearly her duty to choose this, anything poorer would lower the dignity of the future Mrs. Middleton. Gwendolen was learning the "duties" she owed to the station in life to which God had called her. She found no sort of difficulty in this kind of learning, and it was far more really useful than book learning which is proverbially deleterious to thecharacter. She had the umbrella, too, put down to Miss Scott, the Lodgings, King's College. When she got out of the shop the ten-shilling note was still in her purse.
"I shall get some chocolates," she said. "A few!"
Mrs. Potten was emerging from a shop in Broad Street when she caught sight of Mr. Bingham, in cap and gown, passing her and called to him. He stopped and walked a few steps with her, while she informed him that the proceeds of the Sale had come to ninety-three pounds, ten shillings and threepence; but this was only in order to find out whether he had heard of that poor dear Warden's engagement. It was all so very foolish!
"Only that!" said Bingham, who was evidently in ignorance of the event; "and after I bought a table-cloth, which I find goes badly with my curtains, and bedroom slippers, that are too small now I've tried them on. Well, Mrs. Potten, you did your best, anyhow, flinging notes about all over Christ Church. Was the second note found?"
"The second note?" exclaimed Mrs. Potten. "What d'ye mean?"
"You dropped one note at Christ Church, and you would have lost another if Harding hadn't discovered that you had given him an extra note and restored it to Miss Scott. I suppose Miss Scott pretended that it was she who had been clever enough to rescue the note for you?"
"No, she did not," said Mrs. Potten; and here she paused and remained silent, for her brain was seething with tumultuous thoughts.
"Well, but for Harding, the Sale would have madea cool ninety-three pounds, fifteen shillings and threepence. Do you follow me?"
Mrs. Potten did follow him and with much agitation.
"How do you know it was my note and not Miss Scott's own note?" she asked, and there was in her tone a twang of cunning, for Bingham's remarks had roused not only the emotional superficies of Mrs. Potten's nature, but had pierced to the very core where lay the thought of money.
"Because," replied Bingham, "Miss Scott, who was running like a two-year-old, was not likely to have unfastened your note and fitted one of her own under it so tightly that Harding, whose mind is quite accustomed to the solution of simple problems, had to blow 'poof' to separate them. No, take the blame on yourself, Mrs. Potten, and in future have a purse-bearer."
Mrs. Potten's mind was in such a state of inward indignation that she went past the chemist's shop, and was now within a few yards of the Sheldonian Theatre. She had become forgetful of time and place, and was muttering to herself—
"What a little baggage—what a little minx!" and other remarks unheard by Bingham.
"I see you are admiring that semicircle of splendid heads that crown the palisading of the Sheldonian," said Bingham, as they came up close to the historic building.
"Admiring them!" exclaimed Mrs. Potten. "They are monstrosities."
"They are perfectly sweet, as ladies say," contradicted Bingham; "we wouldn't part with them for the world."
"What are they?" demanded Mrs. Potten, trying hard to preserve an outward calm and discretion.
"Jupiter Tonans—or Plato," said Bingham, "and in progressive stages of senility."
"Why don't you have handsome heads?" said Mrs. Potten, and she began to cross the road with Bingham. Bingham was crossing the road because he was going that way, and Mrs. Potten drifted along with him because she was too much excited to think out the matter.
"They are handsome," said Bingham.
Mrs. Potten was speechless. Suddenly she discovered that she was hurrying in the wrong direction, just as if she were running away with Mr. Bingham. She paused at the curb of the opposite pavement.
"Mr. Bingham," she said, arresting him.
He stopped.
"I must go back," she said. "I quite forgot that my car may be waiting for me at the chemist's!" and then she fumbled with her bag, and then looked thoughtfully into Bingham's face as they stood together on the curb. "Bernard always lunches with me on Sundays," she said; "I shall be glad to see you any Sunday if you want a walk, and we can talk about the removal of those heads."
Bingham gave a cordial but elusive reply, and, raising his cap, he sauntered away eastwards, his gown flying out behind him in the light autumn wind.
Mrs. Potten re-crossed the road and walked slowly back to the chemist's. Her car was there waiting for her, and it contained her weekly groceries, her leg of mutton, and the unbleached calico for the making of hospital slings which she had bought in Queen's Street, because she could obtain it there at 4 ½d. per yard.
She went into the chemist's and bought some patent pills, all the time thinking hard. She had two witnesses to Gwendolen Scott's having possession of the note: Mr. Harding and Mr. Bingham; and one witness, Lady Dashwood, to her having delivered the collar and not the note! All these witnesses were unconscious of the meaning of the transaction. She,Mrs. Potten, alone could piece together the evidence and know what it meant, and it was by a mere chance that she had been able to do this. If she had not met Mr. Bingham (and she had never met him before in the street), and if she had not happened to have mentioned the proceeds of the Sale, she would still be under the impression that the note had been mislaid.
"And the impertinence of the young woman!" exclaimed Mrs. Potten, as she paid for her pills. "And she fancies herself in a position of trust, if you please! She means to figure, if you please, at the head of an establishment where we send our sons to be kept out of mischief for a bit! Well, I never heard of anything like it. Why, she'll be tampering with the bills!"
Mrs. Potten's indignation did not wane as the moments passed, but rather waxed.
"And her mother is condescending about the engagement! Why," added Mrs. Potten to herself with emphasis, as she got into her car—"why, if this had happened with one of my maids, I should have put it into the hands of the police."
"The Lodgings, King's," she said to the chauffeur. What was she going to do when she got there?
Mrs. Potten had no intention of bursting into the Lodgings in order to demand an explanation from Miss Scott. No, thank you, Miss Scott must wait upon Mrs. Potten. She must come out to Potten End and make her explanation! But Mrs. Potten was going to the Lodgings merely to ensure that this would be done on the instant.
"Don't drive in," she called, and getting out of the car she walked into the court and went up the two shallow steps of the front door and rang at the bell.
Theretroussénose of Robinson Junior appeared at the opened door. Lady Dashwood was not at home and was not expected till half-past one. It wasthen one o'clock. Mrs. Potten mused for a little and then asked if she might see Lady Dashwood's maid for a moment. Robinson Junior suppressed his scornful surprise that any one should want to see Louise, and ushered Mrs. Potten into the Warden's breakfast-room, and there, seating herself near the window, she searched for a visiting card and a pencil. Louise appeared very promptly.
"Madamewishes something?" she remarked as she closed the door behind her, and stood surveying Mrs. Potten from that distance.
"I do," said Mrs. Potten, taking in Louise's untidy blouse, her plain features, thick complexion and luminous brown eyes in one comprehensive glance. "Can you tell me if Miss Scott will be in for luncheon?" Mrs. Potten spoke French with a strong English accent and much originality of style.
Yes, Miss Scott was returning to luncheon.
"And do you know if the ladies have afternoon engagements?"
Louise thought they had none, because Lady Dashwood was to be at home to tea. That she knew for certain, and she added in a voice fraught with import: "I shall urgeMadameto rest after lunch."
"Humph! I see you look after her properly," said Mrs. Potten, beginning to write on her card with the pencil; "I thought she was looking very tired when I saw her this morning."
"Tired!" exclaimed Louise; "Madameis always tired in Oxford."
"Relaxing climate," said Mrs. Potten as she wrote.
"And this house does not suitMadame," continued Louise, motionless at the door.
"The drains wrong, perhaps," said Mrs. Potten, with absolute indifference.
"I know nothing of drains,Madame," said Louise, "I speak of other things."
"Sans doute il y a du'dry rot,'" said Mrs. Potten, looking at what she had written.
"Ah!" exclaimed Louise, clasping her hands, "Madamehas heard; I did not know his name, but what matter? Ghosts are always ghosts, and my Lady Dashwood has never been the same since that night, never!"
Mrs. Potten stared but she did not express surprise, she wanted to hear more without asking for more.
"Madameknows that the ghost comes to bring bad news about the Warden!"
"Bad news!" said Mrs. Potten, and she put her pencil back into her bag and wondered whether the news of the Warden's engagement had reached the servants' quarters.
"A disaster," said Louise. "Always a disaster—toMonsieurthe Warden.Madameunderstands?"
Louise gazed at Mrs. Potten as if she hoped that that lady had information to give her. But Mrs. Potten had none. She was merely thinking deeply.
"Well," she said, rising, "I suppose most old houses pretend to have ghosts. We have one at Potten End, but I have never seen it myself, and, as far as I know, it does no harm and no good. ButMadamedidn't see the ghost you speak of?" and here Mrs. Potten smiled a little satirically.
"It was Miss Scott," said Louise, darkly.
"Oh!" said Mrs. Potten, with a short laugh. "Oh, well!" and she came towards the maid with the card in her hand. "Now, will you be good enough to give this toMadamethe moment that she returns and say that it is 'Urgent,'d'une importance extrème."
"Well," said Mrs. Potten to herself, as she walked through the court and gained the street, "and I should think itwasa disaster for a quiet, respectable Warden of an Oxford college to marry a person of the Scott type."
As to Louise, when she had closed the front door on Mrs. Potten's retreating figure, she gazed hard at the card in her hand. The writing was as follows:—
"Dear Lena,"Can Miss Scott come to see me this afternoon without fail? Very kindly allow her to come early.
"Dear Lena,
"Can Miss Scott come to see me this afternoon without fail? Very kindly allow her to come early.
"M. P."
It did not contain anything more.
Now, Mrs. Potten really believed in ghosts, but she thought of them as dreary, uninteresting intruders on the world's history. There was Hamlet's father's ghost that spoke at such length, and there was the spirit that made Abraham's hair stand on end as it passed before him, and then there was the ghost of Samuel that appeared to Saul and prophesied evil. But of all ghosts, the one that Mrs. Potten thought most dismal, was the ghost of the man-servant who came out from a mansion, full of light and music, one winter night on a Devon bye-road. There he stood in the snow directing the lost travellers to the nearest inn, and (this was what struck Mrs. Potten's soul to the core) the half-crown (an actual precious piece of money) that was dropped into his hand—fell through the palm—on to the snow—and so the travellers knew that they had spoken to a spirit, and were leaving behind them a ghostly house with ghostly lights and the merriment of the dead.
Mrs. Potten's mind worked in columns, and had she been calm and happy she would have spent the time returning to Potten End in completing the list of ghosts she was acquainted with; but she was excited and full of tumultuous thoughts.
There was, indeed, in Mrs. Potten's soul the strife of various passions: there was the desire to act in ahigh-handed, swift Potten manner, the desire to pursue and flatten any one who invaded the Potten preserves. There was the desire to put her heavy individual foot upon a specimen of the modern female who betrays the honour and the interest of her own class. There was also the general desire to show a fool that she was a fool. There was also the desire to snub Belinda Scott; and lastly, but not least, there was the desire to put her knife into any giddy young girl who had thrown her net over the Warden.
These desires fought tooth and nail with a certain dogged sentiment of fear—a fear of the Warden. If he was deeply in love, what might he do or not do? Would he put Potten End under a ban? Would he excommunicate her, Marian Potten?
And so Mrs. Potten's mind whirled.
At a certain shop in the High there was May Dashwood, looking at a window full of books. No doubt Lady Dashwood was inside, or, more probably, in the shop next door.
An inspiration came to Mrs. Potten. Was the Warden so very much in love? Belinda Scott laid great stress on his being very much in love, and the whole thing being a surprise! Belinda Scott was a liar! And the little daughter who could stoop to thieving ten shillings at a bazaar, might well have been put on by her mother to some equally noxious behaviour to the Warden. She might have lain in wait for him behind doors and on staircases; she might——Mrs. Potten stopped her car, got out of it, and went behind May Dashwood and whispered in her ear.
May turned, her eyebrows very much raised, and listened to what Mrs. Potten had to say.
Great urgency made Mrs. Potten as astute as a French detective.
"I'm quite sorry," she whispered, "to find that your Aunt Lena seems worried about the engagement.Now why on earth, oh why, did the Warden run himself into an engagement with a girl he doesn't really care about?"
This question was a master-stroke. There was no getting out of this for May Dashwood. Mrs. Potten clapped her hand over her mouth and drew in a breath. Then she listened breathless for the answer. The answer must either be: "But hedoesreally care about her," or something evasive.
Not only Mrs. Potten's emotional superficies but her core of flint feared the emphatic answer, and yearned for an evasive one. What was it to be?
May's face had suddenly blanched. Had her Aunt Lena told? No—surely not; and yet Mrs. Potten seemed toknow.
"How can I tell, Mrs. Potten?" said May, unsteadily. "I——"
"Evasive!" said Mrs. Potten to herself triumphantly.
"Never mind! things do happen," she said, interrupting May. "I suppose, at any rate, he has to make the best of it, now it's done."
Mrs. Potten was afraid that she was now going too far, and she swiftly turned the subject sideways before May had time to think out a reply.
"Tell your Aunt Lena that I expect Gwendolen, without fail, after lunch. Please tell her; so kind of you! Good-bye, good-bye," and Mrs. Potten got fiercely into her car.
"Well, I never!" she said, and she said it over and over again. A cloud of thoughts seemed to float with her as the car skimmed along the road, and through that cloud seemed to peer at her, though somewhat dimly, the "beaux yeux" of the Warden of King's.
"I think I shall," said Mrs. Potten, "I think I shall; but I shall make certain first—absolutely certain—first."
Boreham's purpose had been thwarted for the moment. But there was still time for him to make another effort, and this time it was to be a successful effort.
A letter to May would have been the easiest way in which to achieve his purpose, but Boreham shrank from leaving to posterity a written proposal of marriage, because there always was just the chance that such a letter might not be answered in the right spirit, and in that case the letter would appear to future readers of Boreham's biography as an unsolicited testimonial in favour of marriage—as an institution. So Boreham decided to continue "feeling" his way!
After all, there was not very much time in which to feel the way, for May was leaving Oxford on Monday. To-day was Friday, and Boreham knew the King's party were going to chapel at Magdalen. If he went, too, it would be possible for him to get May to himself on the way back to the Lodgings (in the dark).
So to Magdalen he went, hurrying along on that Friday afternoon, and the nearer he got to Magdalen the more sure he was that only fools lived in the country; the more convinced he was that Chartcote had become, even in three months, a hateful place.
Boreham was nearly late, he stumbled into the ante-chapel just as they were closing the doors with solemn insistence. He uncovered his head as he entered, and his nostrils were struck with a peculiar odour of stone and mortar; a sense of space aroundhim and height above him; also with the warmth of some indefinable sense of community of purpose that annoyed him. He was, indeed, already warm enough physically with his haste in coming; he was also spiritually in a glow with the consciousness of his own magnanimity and toleration. Here was the enlightened Boreham entering a temple where they repeated "Creeds outworn." Here he was entering it without any exhibition of violent hostility or even of contempt. He was entering it decorously, though not without some speed. He was warm and did not wish to be made warmer.
What he had not anticipated, and what disappointed him, was that from the ante-chapel he could not see whether the Dashwoods were in the Chapel or not. The screen and organ loft were in the way, they blocked his vision, and not having any "permit" for the Chapel, he had to remain in the ante-chapel, and just hope for the best. He seated himself as near to the door as he could, on the end of the back bench, already crowded. There he disposed of his hat and prepared himself to go through with the service.
Boreham did not, of course, follow the prayers or make any responses; he merely uttered a humming noise with the object of showing his mental aloofness, and yet impressing the fact of his presence on the devout around him.
Many a man who has a conscientious objection to prayer, likes to hear himself sing. But Boreham's singing voice was not altogether under his own control. It was as if the machinery that produced song was mislaid somewhere down among his digestive organs and had got rusted, parts of it being actually impaired.
It had been, in his younger days, a source of regret to Boreham that he could never hope to charm the world by song as well as by words. As he grew older that regret faded, and was now negligible.
Is there any religious service in the world more perfect than evensong at Magdalen? Just now, in the twilight of the ante-chapel, a twilight faintly lit above at the spring of the groined roof, the voices of the choir rose and fell in absolute unison, with a thrill of subdued complaint; a complaint uttered by a Hebrew poet dead and gone these many years, a complaint to the God of his fathers, the only true God.
Boreham marked time (slightly out of time) muttering—
"Tum/tum tum/ti:Tum/tum tum/tum ti/tum?"
"Tum/tum tum/ti:Tum/tum tum/tum ti/tum?"
loud enough to escape the humiliation of being confounded with those weak-minded strangers who are carried away (in spite of their reason) by the charm of sacerdotal blandishments.
He stood there among the ordinary church-goers, conscious that he was a free spirit. He was happy. At least not so much happy as agreeably excited by the contrast he made with those around him, and excited, too, at what was going to happen in about half an hour. That is, if May Dashwood was actually behind that heavy absurd screen in the Chapel. He went on "tum-ing" as if she was there and all was well.
And within the chapel, in one of those deep embrasures against the walls, was May Dashwood. But she was alone. Lady Dashwood had been too tired to come with her, and Gwendolen had been hurried off to Potten End immediately after lunch, strangely reluctant to go. So May had come to the Chapel alone, and, not knowing that Boreham was in the ante-chapel waiting for her, she had some comfort in the seclusion and remoteness of that sacred place. Not that the tragedy of the world was shut out and forgotten, as it is in those busy market-places where men make money and listen too greedily to the chink of coin to hear any far-off sounds from the plain ofArmageddon. May got comfort, not because she had forgotten the tragedy of the world and was soothed by soft sounds, but because that tragedy was remembered in this hour of prayer; because she was listening to the cry of the Hebrew poet, uttered so long ago and echoed now by distressful souls who feel just as he felt the desperate problem of human suffering and the desire for peace.
"Why art thou so vexed, O my soul;And why art thou so disquieted within me?"
"Why art thou so vexed, O my soul;And why art thou so disquieted within me?"
And then the answer; an answer which to some is meaningless, but which, to the seeker after the "things that are invisible," is the only answer—the answer that the soul makes to itself—
"O put thy trust in God!"
"O put thy trust in God!"
May observed no one in the Chapel; she saw nothing but the written words in the massive Prayer-book on the desk before her; and when at last the service was over, she came out looking neither to right nor left, and was startled to find herself emerging into the fresh air with Boreham by her side, claiming her company back to the Lodgings.
It was just dusk and the moon was rising in the east. Though it could not be seen, its presence was visible in the thin vaporous lightness of the sky. The college buildings stood out dimly, as if seen by a pallid dawn.
"You leave Oxford on Monday?" began Boreham, as they went through the entrance porch out into the High and turned to the right.
"Yes," said May, and a sigh escaped her. That Boreham noticed.
"I don't deny the attractions of Oxford," he said. "All I object to is its pretensions."
"You don't like originality," murmured May.
She was thinking of the slums of London where she worked. What a contrast with this noble street! Why should men be allowed to build dens and hovels for other men to live in? Why should men make ugliness and endure squalor?
"I thought you knew me better," said Boreham, reproachfully, "than to say that."
"If you do approve of originality," said May, "then why not let Oxford work out its own evolution, in its own way?"
"It needs entire reconstruction," said Boreham, stubbornly.
"You would like to pass everything through a mill and turn it out to a pattern," said May. "But that's not the way the world progresses. Entire reconstruction would spoil Oxford. What it wants is what we all want—the pruning of our vices and the development of our virtues. We don't want to be shorn of all that makes up our personality."
Boreham said, "That is a different matter; but why should we argue?"
"To leave Oxford and speak of ourselves, of you and me," said May, persisting. "You don't want to be made like me; but we both want to have the selfishness squeezed out of us. There! I warn you that, having once started, I shall probably go on lamenting like the prophet Jeremiah until I reach the Lodgings! So if you want to escape, do find some pressing engagement. I shan't be offended in the very least."
How she longed for him to go! But was he capable of discovering this even when it was broadly hinted?
Boreham's beard moved irritably. The word "selfish" stung him. There was no such thing as being "unselfish"—one man wanted one thing, another man wanted another—and there you are!
"Human nature is selfish," he retorted. "Saintsare selfish. They want to have a good time in the next world. Each man always wants to please himself, only tastes differ."
Boreham spoke in emphatic tones. If May was thinking of her husband, then this piece of truth must be put before her without delay. War widows had the habit of speaking of their husbands as heroes, when all they had done was to have got themselves blown to pieces while they were trying to blow other people to pieces.
"You make questions of taste very important," said May, looking down the misty street. "Some men have a taste for virtue and generosity, and others have taste for vice and meanness."
Boreham looked at her features closely in the dim light.
"Are you angry with me?" he asked.
"Not at all," said May. "We are arguing about words. You object to the use of the word 'selfish,' so I adopt your term 'taste.'"
"There's no reason why we should argue just now," said Boreham. "Not that argument affects friendship! Friendship goes behind all that, doesn't it?" He asked this anxiously.
"I don't expect my friends to agree with me in all points," said May, smiling. "That would be very selfish!" She laughed. "I beg your pardon. I mean that my taste in friends is pretty catholic," and here Boreham detected a sudden coldness in her voice.
"Friendship—I will say more than that—love—has nothing to do with 'points of view,'" he began hastily. "A man may fall in love with a woman as she passes his window, though he may never exchange a word with her. Such things have happened."
"And it is just possible," suggested May, "that a protracted conversation with the lady might have had the effect of destroying the romance."
Here Boreham felt a wave of fear and hope and necessity surge through his whole being. The moment had arrived!
"Not if you were the lady," he said in a convinced tone.
May still gazed down the street, etherealised beyond its usual beauty in this thin pale light.
"I don't think any man, however magnanimous, could stand a woman long if she made protracted lamentations after the manner of Jeremiah," she said.
"You are purposely speaking ill of yourself," said Boreham. "Yet, whatever you do or say makes a man fall in love with you." He was finding words now without having to think.
"I was not aware of it," said May, rather coldly.
"It is true," he persisted. "You are different from other women; you are the only woman I have ever met whom I wanted to marry."
It was out! Not as well put as he would have liked, but it was out. Here was a proposal of marriage by word of mouth. Here was the orthodox woman's definite opportunity. May would see the seriousness of it now.
"As a personal friend of yours," said May, and her tone was not as serious as he had feverishly hoped, "I do not think you are consulting your own interests at this moment, Mr. Boreham."
"No!" began Boreham. "Not mine exclusively——"
"Your remark was hasty—ill considered," she said, interrupting him. "You don't really want to marry. You would find it an irksome bondage, probably dull as well as irksome."
"Not with you!" exclaimed Boreham, and he touched her arm.
May's arm became miraculously hard and unsympathetic.
"Marriage is a great responsibility," she said.
"I have thought that all out," said Boreham. "There may be——"
"Then you know," she replied, "that it means——"
"I have calculated the cost," he said. "I am willing——"
"You have not only to save your own soul but to help some one else to save theirs," she went on. "You have to exercise justice and mercy. You have to forgive every day of your life, and"—she added—"to be forgiven. Wouldn't that bore you?"
Boreham's heart thumped with consternation. It might take months to make her take a reasonable view of marriage. She was more difficult than he had anticipated.
"Marriage is a dreary business," continued May, "unless you go into it with much prayer and fasting—Jeremiah again."
Into Boreham's consternation broke a sudden anger.
"That is why," continued May, "Herod ordered Mariamne to be beheaded, and why the young woman who married the 'beloved disciple' said she couldn't realise her true self and went off with Judas Iscariot." May turned round and looked at him as she spoke.
"I was serious!" burst out Boreham.
"Not more serious than I am," said May; "I am serious enough to treat the subject you have introduced with the fearless criticism you consider right to apply to all important subjects. You ought to approve!"
And yet she smiled just a little at the corners of her mouth, because she knew that, when Boreham demanded the right of every man to criticise fearlessly—what he really had in his mind was the vision of himself, Boreham, criticising fearlessly. He thought of himself, for instance, as trying to shame the Britishpublic for saying slimily: "Let's pretend to be monogamous!" He thought of himself calling out pluckily: "Here, you self-satisfied humbugs, I'm going to say straight out—we ain't monogamous——"
He never contemplated May Dashwood coming and saying to him: "And areyounot a self-satisfied humbug, pretending that there is no courage, no endurance, no moral effort superior to your own?" It was this that made May smile a little.
"The fact remains," he said, feeling his way hotly, blindly, "that a man can, and does, make a woman happy, if he loves her. All I ask," he went on, "is to be allowed the chance of doing this, and you gibe."
"I don't gibe," said May, "I'm preaching. And, after all, I ought not to preach, because marriage does not concern me—directly. I shall not marry again, Mr. Boreham."
Boreham stared hard at her and his eyebrows worked. All she had just been saying provoked his anger; it disagreed with him, made him dismal, and yet, at least, he had no rival! She hadn't got hold of any so-called saint as a future husband. Middleton hadn't been meddling, nor Bingham, and there was no shadowy third anywhere in town. She was heart free! That was something!
There was the dead husband, of course, but his memory would fade as time went on. "Just now, people who are dead or dying, are in the swim," thought Boreham; "but just wait till the war is over!" He swiftly imagined publishers and editors of journals refusing anything that referred to the war or to any dismal subject connected with it. The British public would have no use for the dead when the war was over. The British public would be occupied with the future; how to make money, how to spend it. Stories about love and hate among the living would be wanted, or pleasant discourses about the consolations of religionand blessed hopes of immortality for those who were making the money and spending it!
Boreham sneered as he thought this, and yet he himself desired intensely that men, and especially women, should forget the dead, and, above all, that May should forget her dead and occupy herself in being a pretty and attractive person of the female sex.
"I will wait," said Boreham, eagerly; "I won't ask you for an answer now."
"Now you know my position, you will not put any question to me!" said May, very quietly.
There came a moment's oppressive silence.
"I may continue to be your friend," he demanded; "you won't punish me?" and his voice was urgent.
"Of course not," she said.
"I may come and see you?" he urged again.
"Any friends of mine may come and see me, if they care to," she said; "but I am very much occupied during the day—and tired in the evenings."
"Sundays?" he interrupted.
"My Sundays I spend with friends in Surrey."
Boreham jerked his head nervously. "I shall be living in Town almost immediately," he said; "I will come and see what times would be convenient."
"I am very stupid when my day's work is done," said May.
"Stupid!" Boreham laughed harshly. "But your work is too hard and most unsuitable. Any woman can attend to babies."
"I flatter myself," said May, "that I can wash a baby without forgetting to dry it."
"Why do you hide yourself?" he exclaimed. "Why do you throw yourself away?" He felt that, with her beside him, he could dictate to the world like a god. "Why don't you organise?"
"Do you mean run about and talk," asked May, "and leave the work to other people? Don't youthink that we are beginning to hate people who run about and talk?"
"Because the wrong people do it," said Boreham.
"The people who do it are usually the wrong people," corrected May; "the right people are generally occupied with skilled work—technical or intellectual. That clears the way for the unskilled to run about and talk, and so the world goes round, infinite labour and talent quietly building up the Empire, and idleness talking about it and interrupting it."
Boreham stared at her with petulant admiration. "You could do anything," he said bluntly.
"I shall put an advertisement into theTimes," said May. "'A gentlewoman of independent means, unable to do any work properly, but anxious to organise.'"
They had now turned into a narrow lane and were almost at the gates of the Lodgings. May did not want Boreham to come into the Court with her, she wanted to dismiss him now. She had a queer feeling of dislike that he should tread upon the gravel of the Court, and perhaps come actually to the front door of the Lodgings. She stopped and held out her hand.
"I have your promise," he said, "I can come and see you?" He looked thwarted and miserable.
"If you happen to be in town," she said.
"But I mean to live there," he said. This insinuation on her part, that she had not accepted the fact that he was going to live in town, was unsympathetic of her. "I can't stand the loneliness of Chartcote, it has become intolerable."
The word "loneliness" melted May. She knew what loneliness meant. After all, how could he help being the man he was? Was it his fault that he had been born with his share of the Boreham heredity? Was he able to control his irritability, to suppress his exaggerated self-esteem; both of them, perhaps, symptoms of some obscure form of neurosis?
May felt a pang of pity for him. His face showed signs of pain and discontent and restlessness.
"I shall leave Chartcote any day, immediately. London draws me back to it. I can think there. I can't at Chartcote, the atmosphere is sodden at Chartcote, my neighbours are clods."
May looked at him anxiously. "It is dull for you," she said.
Encouraged by this he went on rapidly. "Art, literature is nothing to them. They are centaurs. They ought to eat grass. They don't know a sunset from a swede. They don't know the name of a bird, except game birds; they are ignorant fools, they are damned——" Boreham's breathing was loud and rapid.
"And yet you hate Oxford," murmured May, as she held out her hand. She still did not mean Boreham to come inside the Court, her hand was a dismissal.
"Because Oxford is so smug," said Boreham. "And the country is smug. England is the land that begets effeteness and smuggishness. Yes, I should be pretty desperate," he added, and he held her hand with some pressure—"I should be pretty desperate, only you have promised to let me come and see you."
May withdrew her hand. "As a friend," she said. "Yes, come as a friend."
Boreham gave a curious toss to his head. "I am under your orders," he said, "I obey. You don't wish me to come with you to the door—I obey!"
"Thank you," said May, simply. "And if you are lonely, well, so am I. There are many lonely people in this world just now, and many, many lonely women!" She turned away and left him.
Boreham raced rather than walked away from the Lodgings towards the stables where he had put up his horse. He hardly knew what his thoughts were. Hewas more strangely moved than he had ever thought he could be. And how solitary he was! What permanent joy is there in the world, after all? Thereisnothing permanent in life! It takes years to find that out—years—if you are well in health and full of vanity! But you do find it out—at last.
As he went headlong he came suddenly against an obstacle. Somebody caught him by the arm and slowed him down.
"Hullo, Boreham!" said Bingham. "Stop a moment!"
Boreham allowed himself to be fastened upon, and suffered Bingham's arm to rest on his, but he puffed with irritation. He felt like a poet who has been interrupted in a fit of inspiration.
"I thought this was one of your War Office days," he said bluntly.
"It is," replied Bingham, in his sweetest curate tones. "But there is special College business to-day, and I'm putting in an extra day next week instead. Look here, do you want a job of work?"
No, of course, Boreham didn't.
"I'm leaving Chartcote," he said, and was glad to think it was true.
"This week?" asked Bingham.
"No," said Boreham, suddenly wild with indignation, "but any time—next week, perhaps."
"This job will only take four or five days," said Bingham.
"What job?" demanded Boreham.
"There's a small library just been given us by the widow of a General."
"Didn't know soldiers ever read books," said Boreham.
"I don't know if he read them," said Bingham, "but there they are. We want some one to look through them—put aside the sort suitable for hospitals,and make acatalogue raisonnéof the others for the camps in Germany."
Boreham wanted to say, "Be damned with yourraisonné," but he limited himself to saying: "Can't you get some college chaplain, or some bloke of the sort to do it?"
"All are thick busy," said Bingham—"those that are left."
"It must be a new experience for them," said Boreham.
"There are plenty of new experiences going," said Bingham.
"And you won't deny," said Boreham, smiling the smile of self-righteousness, as he tried to assume a calm bantering tone, "that experience—of life, I mean—is a bit lacking in Oxford?"
"It depends on what you mean," said Bingham, sweetly. "We haven't the experience of making money here. Also Oxford Dons are expected to go about with the motto 'Pereunt et imputantur' written upon our brows (see the sundial in my college), 'The hours pass and we must give an account of them.'"
Bingham always translated his Latin, however simple, for Boreham's benefit. Just now this angered Boreham.
"This motto," continued Bingham, "isn't for ornament but for an example. In short, my dear man, we avoid what I might call, for want of a more comprehensive term, the Pot-house Experience of life."
Boreham threw back his head.
"Well, you'll take the job, will you?" and Bingham released his arm.
"Can't you get one of those elderly ladies who frequent lectures during their lifetime to do the job?"
"We may be reduced to that," said Bingham, "but even they are busy. It's a nice job," he added enticingly.
"I know what it will be like," grunted Boreham, and he hesitated. If May Dashwood had been staying on in Oxford it would have been different, but she was going away. So Boreham hesitated.
"Telephone me this evening, will you?" said Bingham.
"Very well," said Boreham. "I'll see what I have got on hand, and if I have time——" and so the two men parted.
Boreham got into his gig with a heavy heart and drove back to Chartcote. How he hated the avenue that cut him off from the world outside. How he hated the clean smell of the country that came into his windows. How he hated to see the moon, when it glinted at him from between the tops of trees. He longed for streets, for the odour of dirt and of petrol and of stale-cooked food.
The noise of London soothed him, the jostling of men and women; he hungered for it. And yet he did not love those human beings. He knew their weaknesses, their superstitions, their follies, their unreason! Boreham remembered a much over-rated Hebrew (possibly only a mythical figure) who once said to His followers that when they prayed they should say: "Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us."
He got out of his gig slowly. "I don't forgive them," he said, and, unconscious of his own sins, he walked up the steps into his lonely house.