Lady Dashwood submitted gracefully to being put to bed and propped up by pillows.
The doctor had come, pronounced his patient very greatly over-fatigued though not seriously ill, but he had forbidden her to leave her bed till he gave permission.
"Keep a strict watch over her," he had said to May, outside in the corridor. "She has got to the point when rest will put her right, or fatigue will put her all wrong."
When he had gone May came back into her aunt's room.
"Now you know what it is to be under orders," she said with a smile.
"And what about you, dear?" murmured Lady Dashwood, sweetly. "You can't stay on, of course, darling?"
May frowned to herself and then smiled. "I shall stay till the doctor comes again, because I can't trust you, dear aunt, to keep in bed, if I go."
"You can't trust me," sighed Lady Dashwood, blissfully. "I am beginning to realise that I am not the only reasonable person in the world. I suppose it is good for me, but it is very sad for you, May, to be sacrificed like this."
May said she wasn't being sacrificed, and refused to discuss the matter any longer.
So Lady Dashwood lay quietly looking at the narrow windows, from which college roofs opposite could be seen in a grey Oxford daylight. She made no reference to the Warden's return. She did not tell May when he was expected home, whether he was coming back to lunch, or whether he was coming by a late afternoon train. She did not even mention his name. And May, too, kept up the appearance of not thinking about him. She merely looked up with a rather strained attention if the door opened, or there were sounds in the corridor.
The time came for her to go down to lunch, and Lady Dashwood did not even say: "You will have to take lunch alone." But she said: "I wonder what Marian Potten and Gwendolen are doing?"
So May went into the dining-room and glanced round her with apprehension.
Two places were laid, one for the Warden at the head of the table and one at his right hand.
"You expect the Warden?" she asked of Robinson, who was standing in the room alone, and she came towards the table apprehensively.
He pulled out her chair and said: "No, m'm, I don't think 'e will be in to lunch."
May sat down and breathed again. "You think he will be late?" she asked, speaking as one who cares not, but who needs the information for purposes of business.
"'E said to me, m'm," said Robinson, as he handed a dish to her with old gnarled hands that were a little shaky but still full of service, "as I was 'andin' 'im 'is 'at what 'e wears in London: 'If I'm not 'ome in time for lunch, I shall be 'ome by 'alf-past five.'"
"Oh yes," said May. "Then you'll be putting tea for him in the library, won't you, Robinson?"
Robinson assented. "Yes, m'm, if you 'as tea with 'er ladyship." Then he added, "We're glad, m'm, that you're stayin' on,"—now he dropped hisvoice to a confidential whisper, and wore the air of one who is privileged to communicate private information to a member of the family—"because that French Louise is so exactin' and that jealous of Mrs. Robinson, and no one can't expect a learned gentleman, what 'as the 'ole college on 'is shoulders and ain't used to ladies, to know what to do."
"No, of course not," said May.
"But we've all noticed," said Robinson, solemnly, as he poured out some water into May's glass, "as 'ow 'er ladyship's indisposition 'as come on gradual."
Here he ended his observations, and he went and stood by his carving table with his accustomed bearing of humble importance.
But it would have been a mistake to suppose that Robinson was really humble. He was, on the contrary, proud. Proud because he was part of King's College and had been a part thereof for fifty years, and his father had been part before him. But his pride went further. He was proud of the way he waited. He moved about the room, skimming the edges of the long table and circumventing chairs and protruding backs of awkward guests with peculiar skill. Robinson would have had much sympathy with the Oxford chaplain who offered to give any other clerical gentlemen a generous handicap in the Creed and beat them. Robinson, had he been an ecclesiastic, would have made such a boast himself. As it was, he prided himself on being able to serve round an "ontray" on his own side of the table and lap over two out of the other man's, easy. Robinson was also proud of having a master with a distinguished appearance, and this without any treachery to the late Warden's bald head and exceedingly casual nose. There was no obligation on Robinson's part to back up the old Warden against the new, or indeed the new against the old, because all Wardens were Wardens, and the College was continuous and eternal.
Robinson gloried on there being many thousand volumes in the library. Mrs. Robinson did not share his enthusiasm. He enjoyed opening the door to other Heads of colleges and saying: "Not at 'ome, sir. Is there any message I can take, sir?" for Robinson felt that he was negotiating important affairs that affected the welfare of Oxford. When waiting on the Warden, Robinson's solemnity was not occasioned by pure meekness, nor was his deferential smile (when a smile was suitable) an exposition of snobbery nor the flattery of the wage-earner. Robinson was gratifying his own vanity; he was showing how he grasped the etiquette of his profession. Also he experienced pleasure in being necessary to a human being whose manner and tastes were as impressive as they were unaccountable.
"There's more of these 'ere periodicals coming in," he said that very afternoon, as he arranged the lamp in the library, "though there aren't no more Germans among 'em, than there ever were before in my time." He spoke to Robinson Junior, who had followed him into the library.
"'E don't read 'em," said Robinson Junior, his nose elevated, in the act of drawing the curtains.
"'Ow d'you know?" asked Robinson.
"They ain't cut, not all of 'em," said Junior.
"'E don't read the stuff what is familiar to 'im," explained Robinson, and so saying, he took from some corner of the room a little table and set it up by a chair by the fire, for the Warden's tea-tray.
Meanwhile May Dashwood had taken tea with her Aunt Lena and then had gone to her own room. So that when the Warden did arrive, just about half-past five, he found no one moving about, no one visible. He came in like a thief in the night, pale and silent. He glanced round the hall, preoccupied apparently, but really aware of things that were around him to ahigh degree of sensitiveness. He moved noiselessly, rang the bell, and then looked at the table for letters. Robinson appeared immediately. The Warden's narrow eyes, that seemed to absorb the light that fell upon them, rested upon Robinson's face with that steady but veiled regard with which a master controls those who are under him.
The Warden did not ask "Where are the ladies?" he asked whether Lady Dashwood was in.
"In 'er room, sir," said Robinson; and he then proceeded to explain why, and gave the doctor's report. "Nothin' alarmin', sir."
The Warden said "Ah!" and looked down at the table. He glanced over the letters that were waiting for him. He gathered them in his hands.
"Tea is in the library for you, sir," said old Robinson; "I will bring it in a minute."
The Warden went upstairs.
He went past the drawing-room and past his bedroom into the library. He threw his letters down on the writing-desk, walked to the fire, and then walked back again to the desk. Then he finally went out of the room and passed the head of the staircase and up the two or three steps into the corridor.
He had been into the corridor three times since the arrival of his sister. Once when he conducted her to her room, on her arrival, once again when she had made alterations in the bedrooms and had asked for his approval, and then on that wretched night when he had gone to calm Gwendolen and assure her that there were no such things as ghosts. Now he went along over the noiseless floor, anxious to meet no one. Why was Lena ill? He knew why Lena was ill, but for a moment he felt wearily vexed with her. Why did she make things worse? This feeling vanished when he opened her door and went in, and saw her sitting up in bed supported by pillows. Then his feeling was ofremorse, of anger increased against himself, and himself only.
She was turning the pages of a paper, ostentatiously looking at the illustrations, but she was really waiting in suspense for his arrival and thinking of nothing else.
She looked up at him with a strange smile. "Back!" she said. "And you find me malingering!"
He came up to the bed. "You've been ill," he said, and he did not return her smile. "I'm very sorry, Lena."
"No, only tired," she said. "And I am already better, Jim," she went on, and now she showed great nervousness and her voice was jerky. "I have a letter for you. I want you to read it at once, dear, but not here; read it in the library. Don't stay now; go away, dear, and come and see me afterwards."
She gave him the letter with the handwriting downwards. She had thought this out beforehand. She feared the sight of his emotion. She could not bear it—just now. She was still feeling very shaky and very weak.
He took the letter and turned it over to see the handwriting. She thought he made a movement of surprise. His face she did not look at, she looked at the paper that was lying before her. She longed for him to go away, now that the letter was safely in his hands. He guessed, no doubt, what the letter was about! He must guess!
She little knew. He no more guessed its contents than he would have guessed that in order to secure his salvation some one would be allowed to rise from the dead! The letter he regarded as ominous—of some trouble, some dispute, something inevitable and miserable.
"I hope you have everything you want, Lena," he said as he walked to the door. "I hope Louise doesn'tfuss you." Then he asked: "Have you ever fainted before?"
Lady Dashwood said she hadn't, but added that people over fifty generally fainted, and that she would not have gone to bed had not dear May insisted on it as well as Louise.
He went out. He found the corridor silent. He walked along with that letter in his pocket, feeling a great solitude within him. When he passed Gwendolen's door, something gripped him painfully. And then there washerdoor, too!
He returned to the library and sat down by the tea-table and the fire.
From his chair his eyes rested upon the great window at the end of the library. It was screened by curtains now. It was there, at that exact spot by the right-hand curtain, that Gwendolen had fancied she saw the ghost. A ghost, a thin filmy shape was probably her only conception of something Spiritual. That the story of the Barber's ghost, the story that he came as a prophet of ill tidings to the Warden of the College, seemed to fit in with recent events, the events of the last few days; this only made the whole episode more repulsive. He must train Gwendolen—if indeed she were capable of being trained! The mother would be perhaps even a greater obstacle to a sane and useful life than Gwendolen herself.
Very likely Gwendolen's letter was to announce that Lady Belinda insisted on coming at once, whether there was room for her or not; or possibly the letter contained some foolish enclosure from Lady Belinda, and Gwendolen was shy of communicating it, but had been ordered to do so.
Possibly the letter contained a cutting announcing the engagement! He had glanced through theTimesyesterday and this morning very hastily. Gwendolen'smother might be capable of announcing the engagement before it had actually taken place!
He poured out a cup of tea and drank it, and then took the letter from his pocket.
He started at the opening of his door. Robinson brought in an American visitor, who came with an introduction. The introduction was lying on the desk, not yet opened. The Warden rose—escape was impossible. He put the letter back into his pocket.
"Bring fresh tea, Robinson," said the Warden.
But the stranger declined it. He had business in view. He had a string of solemn questions to ask upon world matters. He wanted the answers. He was writing a book, he wanted copy. He had come, metaphorically speaking, note-book and pencil in hand.
The Warden, with his mind upon private matters, looked gloomily at this visitor to Oxford. Even about "world" matters, with that letter in his pocket, he found it difficult to tolerate an interviewer. How was he to get through his work if he felt like this?
The American, too, became uneasy. He found the Warden unwilling to give him any dogmatic pronouncements on the subject of Literature, on the subject of Education, or the subject of Woman now and Woman in the immediate future. The Warden declined to say whether the Church of England would work for union or whether it was going to split up and dwindle into rival sects. He was also guarded in his remarks about the political situation in England. He would not prophesy the future of Labour, or the fate of Landowners. The Warden was not encouraging. With that letter in his pocket the Warden found it difficult to assume the patient attention that was due to note-book visitors from afar.
This was a bad beginning, surely! How was the future to be met?
The American was about to take his leave, considerablydisappointed with the Heads of Oxford colleges, but he suspected that American neutrality might be at the bottom of the Warden's reticence.
"I am not one of those Americans," he said, rising, "who regard President Woodrow Wilson as the only statesman in the world at this present moment."
The Warden threw his cigarette into the fire. "Wilson has one qualification for statesmanship," he said, rising and speaking as if he was suddenly roused to interest by this highly contentious subject.
The American was surprised. "I presume, coming from you, Professor, that you speak of the President's academic training?" he said.
"I am not a Professor," said the Warden, at last sufficiently awakened from his preoccupation to make a correction that he should have made before. "The University has not conferred that honour upon me. Yes, I mean an academic training. When a man who is trained to think meets a new problem in politics he pauses to consider it; he takes time; and for this the crowd jeer at him! The so-called practical man rarely pauses; he doesn't see, unless he has genius, that he mustn't treat a new problem as if it were an old one. He decides at once, and for this the crowd admire him. 'He knows his own mind,' they say!"
The Warden spoke with a ring of sarcasm in his voice. It was a sarcasm secretly directed against himself. That letter in his pocket was the cause.
He had been confronted in the small world of his own life with a new problem—marriage, and he ought to have understood that it was new, new to himself, complicated by his position and needing thought; and he had not thought, he had acted. He had belied the use and dignity of his training. Had he any excuse? There was the obligation to marry, and there was "pity." Were these excuses? They were miserable excuses.
But he had no time to argue further with himself, the inexorable voice of the man standing opposite to him broke in.
"In your view, Warden, the practical man is too previous?" said the American, making notes (in his own mind).
"He is too confident," said the Warden. "It is difficult enough to make an untrained man accept a new fact. It is still more difficult to make him think out a new method!"
"I opine," said the American, "that in your view President Wilson has only one qualification for statesmanship?"
"I didn't say that," said the Warden. "He may have the other, I mean character. Wilson may have the moral courage to act in accordance with his mental insight, and if so, if he has both the mental and moral force necessary, he might well be, what you do not yourself hold, the only living statesman in the world. Time will tell."
Here the Warden smiled a curious smile and made a movement to indicate that the visit must come to an end. He must be alone—he needed to think—alone. How was he at this moment showing "character, moral courage?" Here he was, unable to bear the friction of an ordinary interview. Here he was, almost inclined to be discourteous. Here he was, determined to bear no longer with his visitor.
When the door closed upon the stranger, the Warden, sick with himself and sick with the world, turned to his desk. His letters must be looked through at once. Very well, let him begin with the letter in his pocket.
But he first sorted his other letters, throwing away advertisements and useless papers. Then he took the letter from his pocket. The very handwriting showedincapacity and slackness. At dinner he would have the writer of this letter on one side of him, and on the other—he dared not think! The Warden ground his teeth and tore open the letter, and then a knock came at his door.
"Come in," he said almost fiercely.
Robinson came in. "I was to remind you, sir, that Mr. Bingham would be here to dinner."
So much the better. "Very well, Robinson," he said.
Robinson withdrew.
The letter was a long one. It was addressed at the top "Potten End."
"Potten End," said the Warden, half aloud. This was strange! Then she was not in the house!
The letter began—
"Dear Dr. Middleton,"When you get this letter I shall have left your house and I shan't return. I hope you will forgive me. I don't know how to tell you, but I have broken off our engagement——"
"Dear Dr. Middleton,
"When you get this letter I shall have left your house and I shan't return. I hope you will forgive me. I don't know how to tell you, but I have broken off our engagement——"
The Warden stared at the words. There were more to come, but these—these that he had read! Were they true?
"My God!" he exclaimed, below his breath, "I don't deserve it!" and he made some swift strides in the room; "I don't deserve it!"
The Warden went to the door and turned the key. Why, he did not know. He simply did it instinctively. Then he finished reading the letter; and having read it through, read it again a second time. He was a free man, and he had obtained his freedom through a circumstance that was pitifully silly, a circumstance almost incredibly sordid and futile.
Her humiliation was his humiliation, for had he not chosen her to be his companion for life? Had he not at this time, when the full responsibility of manhood was placed on every man, had he not chosen as the mother of his children, a moral weakling?
He locked the letter up in his desk and paced the length of the room once or twice. Then he threw himself into a chair and, clasping his head in his hands, remained there motionless. Could he be the same man who had a few days ago, of his own free will, without any compulsion, without any kind of necessity, offered himself for life to a girl of whom he knew absolutely nothing, except that she had had a miserable upbringing and an heredity that he could not respect? Was it her slender beauty, her girlishness, that had made him so passionately pitiful?
From an ordinary man this action would have been folly, but from him it was an offence! A very greatoffence, now, in these times. On the desk lay some pages of notes—notes of a course of public lectures he was about to give, lectures on the responsibility of citizenship, in which he was going to make a strong appeal to his audience for a more conscious philosophy of life. He was going to urge the necessity for greater reverence for education. He was going to speak not only of the burden of Empire, but of the new burden, the burden of Democracy, a Democracy that is young, independent, and feeling its way. He was going to speak of the true meaning of a free Democracy, no chaotic meaningless freedom, but the sane and ordered freedom of educated men, Democracy open-eyed and training itself, like a strong man, to run a race for some far-off, some desired goal to which "all creation moves."
He was in these lectures going to pose not only as a practical man but as a preacher, one of those who "point the way"; and meanwhile he had bound himself to a girl who not only would be unable to grasp the meaning of any strenuous moral effort, but who would have to be herself guarded from every petty temptation that came in her way. He was (so he said to himself, as he groaned in his spirit) one of those many preachers who, in all ages, have talked of moral progress, and who have missed the road that they themselves have pointed out!
He was fiercely angry with himself because he had called the emotion that he had felt for Gwendolen in her mischance a "passionate pity." It was a very different emotion from that which wrung him when his old pupils, one by one, gave up their youth and hope in the service of their country. That indeed was a passionate pity, a pity full of remorseful gratitude, full of great pride in their high purpose and their noble self-sacrifice. On his mantelpiece, within arm's length of him, lay an open book. It was a book ofpoems, and there were verses that the Warden had read more than once.
"City of hope and golden dreaming."
"City of hope and golden dreaming."
A farewell to Oxford. It was the farewell of youth in its heyday to
"All the things we hoped to do."
"All the things we hoped to do."
And then followed the lines that pierced him now with poignant sadness as he thought of them—
"Dreams that will never be clothed in being,Mother, your sons have left with you."
"Dreams that will never be clothed in being,Mother, your sons have left with you."
The Warden groaned within himself. He was part of that Alma Mater; that city left behind in charge of that sacred gift!
He loathed himself, and this deep self-humiliation of a scrupulous gentleman was what his sister had shrunk from witnessing. It was this deep humiliation that May Dashwood fled from when she hid herself in her room that afternoon.
The Warden was not a man who spent much time in introspection. He had no subtlety of self-analysis, but what insight he had was spent in condemning himself, not in justifying himself. But now he added this to his self-accusations, that if May Dashwood had not suddenly stepped across his path and revealed to him true womanhood, gilded—yes, he used that term sardonically—gilded by beauty, he might not have seen the whole depth of his offence until now, when the crude truth about Gwendolen was forced upon him by her letter.
The Warden sat on, crushed by the weight of his humiliation. And he had been forgiven, he had been rescued from his own folly. His mistake had been wiped out, his offence pardoned.
And what about Gwendolen herself? What about this poor solitary foolish girl? What was to be herfuture? Swiftly she had come into his life and swiftly gone! What, indeed, was to become of her and her life?
And so the Warden sat on till the dressing-bell rang, and then he got up from his chair blindly.
He had been forgiven and rescued too easily. He did not deserve it. How was it that he had dared to quote to May Dashwood those solemn, awful words—
"And the glory of the Lord is all in all!"
"And the glory of the Lord is all in all!"
It must have seemed to her a piece of arrogant self-righteousness.
And she had said: "What is the glory of the Lord?" and had answered the question herself. Her answer had condemned him; the glory of the Lord was not merely self-restraint, stoical resignation, it was something more, it was "Love" that "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."
"For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"
The Warden dressed, moving about automatically, not thinking of what he was doing. When he left his bedroom he passed the head of the staircase. There were letters lying on the table, just as letters had lain waiting for him on that evening, on that Monday evening, when he found Gwendolen reading the letter from her mother and crying over it. Within those few short days he had risked the happiness and the usefulness of his whole life, and—God had forgiven him.
He passed the table and went on. Lena must have been waiting for him, expecting him! Perhaps she had been worrying. The thought made him walk rapidly along the corridor.
He knocked at her door. Louise opened it.
"Entrez, Monsieur," she said, in the tone andmanner of one who mounts guard and whose permission must be obtained.
She stood aside to let him pass, and then went out and pulled the door to after her.
The Warden walked up to the bed.
Lady Dashwood's face was averted from him. "Jim," she said wistfully, and she put her hand over her eyes and waited for the sound of his voice.
She was there, waiting for him to show her what sort of sympathy he needed. He did not speak. He came round to the side of the bed where she was lying, by the windows. There he stood for a moment looking down upon her. She did not look up. She looked, indeed, like a culprit, like one humbled, who longed for pardon but did not like to ask for it. And it was this profound humble sympathy that smote his heart through and through. What if anything had happened to this dear sister of his? What if her unhappiness had been too great a strain upon her?
He knelt down by the bed and laid his face on her shoulder, just as he used to do when he was a child. Neither of them spoke. She moved her hand and clasped his arm that he placed over her, and they remained like this for some minutes, while a great peace enclosed them. In those few minutes it seemed as if years dropped away from them and they were young again. She the motherly young woman, and he the motherless boy to whom she stood as mother. All the interval was forgotten and there they were still, mother and son.
When at last he raised himself he found that her eyes were dim with tears. As to himself, he felt strangely quieted and composed. He pulled a chair to the bedside and sat down, not facing her, but sideways, and he rested his elbow on the edge of her pillow his other hand resting on hers.
"Did you get through all you wanted to, in Town?" she asked, smiling through her tears.
"Lena!" he said in a low voice, "you want to spare me. You always do."
His voice overwhelmed her. His humility pierced her like a sword.
"It was all my fault, dear," she began; "entirely my fault."
"No," he said, in a low emphatic voice.
"It was." She reiterated this with almost a sullen persistence.
"How could it possibly be your fault?" he said, with deep self-reproach.
"It was," she said, "though I cannot make you understand it. Jim, you must forget it all, for my sake. You must forget it at once, you have things to do."
"I have things to do," he said. "I seemed in danger of forgetting those things," he said huskily. "As to forgetting, that is a difficult matter."
"You must put it aside," she said, and now she raised herself on her pillows and stared anxiously into his face. "You made a mistake such as the best manwouldmake," she argued passionately. "How can a strong man suspect weakness in others? You know how it is, we suspect in others virtues and vices that we have ourselves. You know what I mean, dear. A drunkard always suspects other men of wanting to drink!" and she laughed a little, and her voice trembled with an excitement she found it difficult to suppress. "Thieves always suspect others of thieving. An amorous man sees sex motives in everything. Do you suppose an honourable man doesn't also suspect others of honourable intentions?"
He made no reply.
"Besides, you have always been eager to think the best of women. You've credited them, evenwith mental gifts that they haven't got! You have been over-loyal to them all your life! And now"—here Lady Dashwood put out her hand and laid it on his arm as if to compel him to agree—"and now you are suffering for it, or rather you have suffered. You thought you were doing your duty, that you ought to marry. You were right; you ought to marry, and I, just at that moment, thrust somebody forward who looked innocent and helpless. And how could you tell? Of course you couldn't tell," and now her voice dropped a little and she seemed suddenly to have become tired out, and she sank back on her pillows.
The Warden leant over her. Her special pleading for him was so familiar to him. She had corrected his faults, admonished him when necessary, but had always upheld his self-respect, even in small matters. She was fighting now for the preservation of his sense of honour.
"Anyhow, darling," she said, "you must forget!"
"You are exhausted," he said, "in trying to make black white. I ought not to have come in and let you talk. Lena, what has happened this week has knocked you up. I know it, and even now you are worrying because of me. I will forget it, dear, if you will pick up again and get strong."
"I am better already," she said, and the very faintest smile was on her face. "I am rather tired, but I shall be all right to-morrow. All I want is a good night's sleep. I want to sleep for hours, and I shall sleep for hours now that I have seen you."
A knock came on the door.
"They are looking for you, dear," said Lady Dashwood.
The Warden slowly rose from his seat. "I must go now, Lena," he said, "but I shall come in again the last thing. I shall come in without knocking if Imay, because I hope you will be asleep, and I don't want to wake you."
"Very well," she said smiling. "You'll find me asleep. I feel so calm, so happy."
He bent down and kissed her and then went to the door. She turned her head and looked after him. Louise was at the door.
"MonsieurBingham is arrived," she said; "I regret to have disturbedMonsieur."
The Warden walked slowly down the corridor. There was something that he dreaded, something that was going to happen—the first meeting of the eyes—the first moment when May Dashwood would look at him, knowing all that had happened!
He passed the table again on which lay his letters. He would look through all that pile of correspondence after Bingham had gone.
Robinson was hovering at the stairhead. "Mr. Bingham is in the drawing-room, sir."
"Alone?" asked the Warden.
"Mrs. Dashwood is there, sir," said Robinson.
"How have you arranged the table?" asked the Warden.
"I've put Mrs. Dashwood close on your right, sir," said Robinson, secretly amazed at the question; "Mr. Bingham on your left, sir."
"Yes," said the Warden. "Yes, of course!" passing his servant with an abstracted air.
"Shall I announce dinner, sir?" asked Robinson, hurrying behind and measuring his strength for what he was about to perform in the exercise of his duty.
"Yes," said the Warden, still moving on, and now near the drawing-room door.
Robinson made a wondrous skip, a miracle it was of service in honour of the Warden; he flew past his master like an aged but agile Mercury and pounced upon the drawing-room door handle. Then he threwthe door open. He waited till the Warden had advanced to a sufficient distance in the room towards the guests who were waiting by the fireside, and then he uttered, in his penetrating but quavering voice, the familiar and important word—
"Dinner!"
"I am sorry I'm late," said the Warden quietly, and he looked at both his guests. "I have been with Lady Dashwood. I must apologise, Bingham, for her absence. I expect Mrs. Dashwood has already told you that she is not well."
The bow with which the Warden offered his arm to May was one which included more than the mere formal invitation to go down to dinner, it meant a greeting after absence and an acknowledgment that she was acting as his hostess. It was one of those ceremonial bows which men are rarely able to make without looking pompous. He had the reputation, in Oxford, of being one of the very few men who, in his tutorial days, could present men for degrees with academic grace.
"I'm sorry, Bingham," he said; "I have only just returned, or I might have secured a fourth to dinner—yes, even in war time."
May went downstairs, wondering. Wondering how it was that the worst was so soon over, and that, after all, instead of feeling a painful pity for the man whose arm held hers in a light grasp, she felt strangely timorous of him.
She was profoundly thankful for the presence of Bingham, who was following behind, cheerful and chatty, having put aside, apparently, all recollectionof the conversation of the evening before. Yes, whatever his secret thoughts might have been, Bingham appeared to have forgotten that there were any moonlight nights in the streets of Oxford. For this, May blessed him.
They entered the long dining-room and, sitting at the Warden's end of the table, formed a bright living space of light and movement. Outside that bright space the room gradually sombred to the dark panelled walls. The Warden, in his high-backed chair, looked the very impersonation of Oxford. This was what struck Bingham as he glanced at his host, and the thought suggested that hater of Oxford, the Warden's relative, Bernard Boreham.
"I have just got your friend Boreham to undertake a job of work," said Bingham. "It'll do him a world of good to have work, a library to catalogue for the use of our prisoners. He wanted to shove off the job to some chaplain. I was to procure the chaplain, just as if all men weren't scarce, even chaplains!"
Composed as the Warden was, he looked at Bingham with something of eager attention on his face, as if relying on him for support and conversation.
"Poor old Boreham, he is a connection of mine by marriage," he said, and as the words fell from his lips, he, in his present sensitive mood, recoiled from them, for they implied that Boreham was not a friend. Why was he posing as one who was too superior to choose Boreham as a friend?
"Talking of chaplains," said Bingham, who knew nothing of what was going on in the Warden's mind, and thought this sudden stop came from dislike of any reference to Boreham—"talking of parsons, why not release all parsons in West End churches for the war?"
A smile came into May's face at the extreme sweetness of Bingham's voice; a warning that he was about to say something biting.
"Release all parsons who have smart congregations," continued Bingham, in honied tones; "parsons with congregations of jolly, well-dressed women, women who enjoy having their naughtiness slanged from the pulpit just as they enjoy having their photographs in the picture papers. Their spiritual necessities would be more than adequately provided for if they were given a dummy priest and a gramophone."
May's smile seemed to stimulate Bingham's imagination.
"To waste on them a real parson with a soul and a rudimentary intellect," he went on, "is like giving a glass of Moselle to an agricultural labourer when he would be happy with a mug of beer. But the Church wastes its energies even in this time of heartbreakings."
"I should like to see you, Bingham," said the Warden, smiling too, and turning his narrow eyes, in his slow deliberate manner, towards his guest, "as chairman to a committee of English bishops, on the Reconstruction of the Church."
"I've no quarrel with our bishops," said Bingham; "I don't want them to extol every new point of view as they pass along. I don't expect them to behave like young men. Nor do I expect them to be like the Absolute, without 'body, parts or passions.' My indictment is not even against that mere drop in the ocean, 'good Christian souls,' but against humanity and human nature!" Bingham looked from one to the other of his listeners. "Until now, the only people we have taken quite seriously are the very well dressed and the—well, the undressed. The two classes overlap continually. But now we've got to take everybody seriously; we are going to have a Democracy. Human nature has got a new tool, and the tool is Democracy. The new tool is to be put into the same foolish old hands, and we shall very soon discover what we shall call 'the sins of Democracy.' What is fundamentallywrong with us is what apparently we can't help: it's that we are ourselves, that we are human beings." Bingham smiled into his plate. "We adopt Christianity, and because we are human beings we make it intellectually rigid and morally sloppy. We are patronising Democracy, and we shall make it intellectually rigid and morally sloppy too—if we don't take care. Everything we handle becomes intellectually rigid and morally sloppy. And yet we still fancy that, if only we could get hold of the right tools, our hands would do the right work."
"The Reconstruction of Human Nature is what you are demanding," said the Warden.
"Yes, that's what we want," sighed Bingham. "When we have got rid of the Huns, we must begin to think about it."
"If you saw the children I have seen, Mr. Bingham," said May, quietly, "you would want to begin at once, and I think you would be hopeful."
There was on the Warden's face a sudden passionate assent that Bingham detected.
"All men," said Bingham, leaning back in his chair and regarding his two listeners with veiled attention—"all men like to hear a woman say sweet, tender, hopeful things, even if they don't believe them. As for myself, Mrs. Dashwood, I admit that your 'higher optimism' haunts me too at times; at rare times when, for instance, the weather in Oxford is dry and bright and bracing."
If he had for a moment doubted it since the afternoon at the Hardings', Bingham was now sure, as sure as a man can be of what is unconfessed in words, that between this man and woman sitting at the table with him was some secret sensitive interest that was not friendship.
How did this conviction affect Bingham and Bingham's spirits? It certainly did not put a stop to hisflow of talk. Rather, he talked the more; he was even more sweetly cynical and amiably scintillating than usual. If his heart was wounded, and he himself was not sure whether it was or not, he hid that heart successfully in a sheath of his own sparks.
A pause came when Robinson put out the light over the carving-table and withdrew with Robinson Junior. The dining-room was silent. Bingham drank some wine, the Warden mused, and May Dashwood sat with her eyes on a glass of water by her, looking at it as if she could see some vision in its transparency. The fire was glowing a deep red in the great stone chimney-piece at the further end of the room. A coal fell forward upon the hearth with a strangely solitary sound. Bingham glanced towards the fire and then round the room, and then at his host, and lastly at May Dashwood.
"I heard a rumour," he said, and he took a sip of his claret, "that your college ghost had made an appearance!"
There came another silence in the room.
"One doesn't know how such rumours come about," continued Bingham; "perhaps you hadn't even heard of this one?" He looked across at May and round at the Warden. Neither of them seemed to be aware that a question was being asked.
"I didn't know King's even claimed a ghost," said Bingham again. "I've heard of the ghost of Shelley in the High," he added, smiling. "A ghost for the tourist who comes to see the Shelley Memorial."
May looked down rather closely at the table.
The Warden moved stiffly. "I don't believe Shelley would want to come," he said. "He always despised his Alma Mater."
"He was a bit of anenfant terrible," said Bingham, "from the tutor's point of view."
May raised her eyes with relief; the Warden had parried the question of the ghost with skill.
"And I don't believe," said the Warden, "that any one returns who has merely roystered within our walls," and he smiled.
Bingham was now looking very attentively at the Warden out of his dark eyes.
"Jeremy Bentham," he said, "seems to have been afraid of ghosts, when he was an undergraduate here. He was afraid of barging against them on dark college staircases. It's a fear I can't grasp. I would much rather come into collision with any ghost than with the Stroke of the 'Varsity Eight, whether the staircase was dark or not."
"If there are ghosts," said the Warden, pensively, "I should expect to see Cranmer, on some wild night, wandering near the places where he endured his passion and his death. Or I should expect to see Laud pacing the streets, amazed at the order and discipline of modern Oxford. If personal attachment could bring a man from the grave," he went on, meeting Bingham's eyes with a smile, "why shouldn't that least ghostly of all scholars, your old master, Jowett—why shouldn't he walk at night when Balliol is asleep?"
"Then there was nothing in the rumour," said Bingham, "that your King's ghost has turned up?"
"The Warden doesn't believe in ghosts," said May, looking across the table eagerly. She remembered how he had stood by the bedside of Gwendolen that night. She recalled the room vividly, the gloom of the room and he alone standing in the light thrown upon him by the lamp. She could recall every tone of his voice as he said: "You thought you saw something. You made a mistake. You saw nothing, you imagined that you saw—there was nothing," and how his voice convincedher, as she stood by the fireand listened. How long ago was that—only three days—it seemed like a month.
"No," said the Warden, "I don't believe in ghosts. At least, I don't believe that our dead"—and he pronounced the last word reverently—"are such that they can return to us in human form, or through the intervention of some hired medium. But if there are ghosts in Oxford," he went on, and now he turned to Bingham, as if he were answering his question—"if there are ghosts in Oxford they will be the ghosts of those who were, in life, bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. I am thinking of those men who lived and died in Oxford, recluses who knew no other world, and of whom the world knew nothing—men who used to flit like shadows from their solitary rooms to the Lecture hall and to High table and to the Common room. Those men were monks in all but name; celibates, solitaries—men to whom the laughter of youth was maddening pain."
May's eyes dropped! What the Warden was saying stabbed her, not merely because of the words he said, but because his voice conveyed the sense of that poignant pain.
"Such men as I speak of," he went on, "Oxford must always have possessed, even in the boisterous days when you fellows of All Souls," he said, addressing Bingham, "used to pull your doors off their hinges to make bonfires in honour of the mallard. There always have been these men, students shy and sensitive, shrinking from the rougher side of the ordinary man, shrinking from ordinary social life; men who are only courageous in their devotion to learning and to truth; men who are lonely with that awful loneliness of those who live in the world of thoughts. I knew one such man myself. Those who believe in ghosts may come upon the shades of these men in the passages and in the cloisters at night, or hiding in the dark recesses of ourcollege windows. Why, I can feel them everywhere—and yet I don't believe in ghosts." The Warden placed his elbows upon the table and rested his chin upon his hands, and looked down at the table-cloth.
May said nothing; she was listening, her face bent but expressive even to her eyebrows.
"Neither do I," said Bingham, in an altered voice. "I don't believe in ghosts, and yet, what do we know of this world? We talk of it glibly. But what do we know of the forces which make up the phantasmagoria that we call the World? What do we know of this vast universe? We perceive something of it by touch, by sight, sound and smell. These are the doors through which its forces penetrate the brain of man. These doors are our way of 'being aware' of life. The psychology of man is in its infancy. And remember"—here Bingham leaned over the table and rested his eyes on May—"it is man studying himself! That makes the difficulty!" Bingham was serious now, and he had slipped from slang into the academic form in which his thoughts really moved.
"And we don't even know whether our ways of perceiving are the only ways," said the Warden.
"Anyhow," said Bingham, turning to him, "the ghosts you 'feel,' and which you and I don't believe in, belong to the old Oxford, the Oxford which is gone."
There came a sudden silence in the long room, and May felt that she ought to make a move. She looked at the Warden.
"That Oxford," continued Bingham, "is gone for ever. It began to go when men hedged it round with red brick, and went to live under red-tiled roofs with wives and children."
"Yes, it has gone," said the Warden. "Must you leave us!" he asked, rising, as May looked at him and made a movement to rise.
Bingham rose to his feet, but he stood with his handholding the foot of his glass and gazing into its crimson depths.
"Pardon, Middleton! Mrs. Dashwood, one moment," he said, and he raised his glass solemnly till it was almost on a level with his dark face. "Will you pledge me?" he asked. "To the old Oxford that is past and gone!"
The Warden and May were both drinking water. They raised their glasses and touched Bingham's wine which glowed in the light from above, almost suggesting something sacramental. And Bingham himself looked like a smooth, swarthy priest of mediæval story, half-serious and half-gay, disguised in modern dress.
"To the Oxford of sacred memory," he said.
They drank.
May was thinking deeply and as she was about to place her glass back upon the table, the thought that was struggling for expression came to her. She lifted her glass: "To the Oxford that is to be," she said gently. She glanced first at Bingham, and then her eyes rested for a moment upon the Warden.
Bingham watched her keenly. He could see that at that moment she had no thought of herself. Her thoughts were of Oxford alone, and, Bingham guessed, with the man with whom she identified Oxford.
Bingham hesitated to raise his glass. Was it a flash of jealousy that went through him? A jealousy of the new Oxford and all that it might mean to the two human beings beside him? If it was jealousy it died out as swiftly as it had come.
He raised his glass.
"To the Oxford of the Future," said the Warden.
"Ad multos annos," said Bingham.
Lady Dashwood professed to be very much better the next morning when May looked in to see how she had slept.
"I'm a new woman," she said to May; "I slept till seven, and then, my dear, I began to think, and what do you think my thoughts were?"
May shook her head. "You thought it was Sunday morning."
"Quite true," said Lady Dashwood; "I heard the extra bells going on round us. No, what I was thinking of was, what on earth Marian Potten did with Gwendolen yesterday afternoon. I'm quite sure she will have made her useful. I can picture Marian making her guest put on a big apron and some old Potten gloves and taking her out into the garden to gather beans. I can picture them gathering beans till tea-time. Marian is sure to be storing beans, and she wouldn't let the one aged gardener she has got left waste his time on gathering beans. I can see Marian raking the pods into a heap and setting fire to the heap. I imagined that after tea Gwendolen played the 'Reverie' by Slapovski. After dinner: 'Patience.'"
May pondered.
"And now. May," said Lady Dashwood, looking tired in spite of her theory that she had become a new woman, "it's a lovely day; even Louise allows that the sun is shining, and I can't have you staying indoorson my account. I won't allow you in my bedroom to-day. I shall be very busy."
"No!" said May, reproachfully. "I shall not allow business."
"I'm just going to write a letter to my dear old John, whom I've treated shamefully for a week, only sending him a scrawl on half a page. Now, I want you to go to church, or else for a walk. I can tell you what the doctor says when you come back."
May said neither "Yes" nor "No." She laughed a little and went out of the room.
In the breakfast-room the Warden was already there. They greeted each other and sat down together, and talked strict commonplaces till the meal was over. He did not ask May what she was going to do, neither did she ask him any questions. They both were following a line of action that they thought was the right one. Neither intended meeting the other unless circumstances compelled the meeting; circumstances like breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was clear to both of them that, except on these occasions, they had no business with each other. The Warden was clear about it because he was a man still ashamed.
May was clear that she had no business to see the Warden except when necessity occasioned it, because each moment made her more unfaithful to the memory of the dead, to the memory of the dead man who could no longer claim her, who had given away his all at the call of duty and who had no power to hold her now. So she, too, being honourably proud, felt ashamed in the presence of the Warden.
All that morning was wasted. The doctor did not come, and May spent the time waiting for him. Lady Dashwood sat up in bed and wrote an apparently interminable letter to her husband. Whenever May appeared she said: "Go away, May!" and then she looked long and wistfully at her niece.
Two or three men came to lunch and went into the library afterwards with the Warden, and May went to her Aunt Lena's room.
"The doctor won't come now till after three, May, so you must go out, or you will really grieve me," said Lady Dashwood. "Jim will take you out. He came in just after you left me before lunch, and I told him you would go out."
"You are supposed to be resting," said May, "and I can't have you making arrangements, dear Aunt Lena. I shall do exactly what I please, and shall not even tell you what I please to do. I do believe," she added, as she shook up the pillows, "that in the next world, dear, you will want to make plans for God, and that will get you into serious trouble."
Lady Dashwood sighed deeply. "Oh dear, oh dear," she said, "I suppose I must go on pretending I'm ill."
May shook her head at her and pulled down the blinds, and left her in the darkness suitable for repose.
The Warden had not mentioned a walk. Perhaps he hadn't found an opportunity with those men present! Should she go for a walk alone? She found herself dressing, putting on her things with a feverish haste. Then she took off her coat and sat down, and took her hat off and held it on her knees.
She thought she heard the sound of a voice in the corridor outside, and she put on her hat with trembling fingers and caught up the coat and scarf and her gloves.
She went out into the corridor and found it empty and still. She went to the head of the stairs. There was no sound coming from the library. But even if the Warden were still there with the other men, she might not hear any sounds of their talk. They might be there or they might not. It was impossible to tell.
Perhaps he had gone to look for her in the drawing-room and, finding no one there, had gone out.
The drawing-room door was open. She glanced in. The room was empty, of course, and the afternoon sunshine was coming in through the windows, falling across the floor towards the fireplace. It would soon creep up to the portrait over the fireplace.
May waited several minutes, walking about the room and listening, and then she went out and closed the door behind her. She went down the staircase into the hall, opened the front door very slowly and went out.
An indescribable loneliness seized her as she walked over the gravelled court to the gates. The afternoon sunshine was less friendly than rain and bitter wind. She took the road to the parks, meeting the signs of the war that had obliterated the old Sunday afternoons of Oxford in the days of peace. Here was suffering, a deliberate preparation for more suffering. Did all this world-suffering make her small personal grief any less? Yes, it did; it would help her to get over the dreary space of time, the days, months, years till she was a grey-haired woman and was resigned, having learned patience and even become thankful!
Once she thought she saw the figure of the Warden in the distance, and then her heart beat suffocatingly, but it was not he. Once she thought she saw Bingham walking with some other man. He rounded the walk by the river and—no, it was not Mr. Bingham—the face was different. She began asking herself questions that had begun to disturb her. Was the real tragedy of the Warden's engagement to him not the discovery that Gwendolen was silly and weak, but that she was not honourable? Had he suspected something of the kind before he received that letter? Wasn't it a suspicion of the kind that had made him speak as he did in the drawing-room after they had returned from Christ Church? Might he not have been contented with Gwendolen if she had been straight and true, however weak and foolish? Was he the sort of man whodemands sympathy and understanding from friends, men and women, but something very different from a wife? Was the Warden one of those men who prefer a wife to be shallow because they shrink from any permanent demand being made upon their moral nature or their intellect? Perhaps the Warden craved a wife who was thoughtless, and, choosing Gwendolen, was disappointed in her, solely because he found she was not trustworthy. That suspicion was a bitter one. Was it an unjust suspicion?
As May walked, the river beside her slipped along slowly under the melancholy willows. The surface of the water was laden with fallen leaves and the wreckage of an almost forgotten summer. It was strangely sad, this river!
May turned away and began walking back to the Lodgings. There was a deepening sunshine in the west, a glow was coming into the sky. Oh, the sadness of that glorious sunset!
May was glad to hide away from it in the narrow streets. She was glad to get back to the court and to enter the darkened house, and yet there was no rest for her there. Soon, very soon, she would say good-bye to this calm secluded home and go out alone into the wilderness!
She walked straight to her room and took off her things, and then went into Lady Dashwood's room. Louise was arranging a little table for tea between the bed and the windows.
"Well!" cried Lady Dashwood. "So you have had a good walk!"
"It was a lovely afternoon," said May. She looked out of the window and could see the colour of the sunset reflected on the roof opposite.
Lady Dashwood watched Louise putting a cloth on the table, and remarked that "poor Jim" would be having tea all alone!
"I think the Warden is out," said May, as she stood at the window.
"Oh!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood, but at that moment the doctor was ushered into the room. He apologised for coming so late in the day, he had been pressed with work. "I'm perfectly well," said Lady Dashwood; "I don't need a doctor, you are simply wasted on me. I can come down to dinner."
There was no doubt that she was better. The doctor admitted it and praised her, but he refused to let her get up till the next day, and then only for tea in the drawing-room; and, strange to say, Lady Dashwood did not argue the point, merely remarking that she wasn't sure whether she could be trusted to remain in bed. She wouldn't promise that she could be trusted.
When the doctor left May slipped out with him, and they went along the corridor together.
"How much better is she?" she asked. "Is she really on the road to being quite well?"
"She's all right," said the doctor, as they went down the staircase, "but she mustn't be allowed to get as low as she was yesterday, or there will be trouble."
"And," said May, "what about me?" and she explained to him that she was only in Oxford on a visit and had work in London that oughtn't to be left.
"Has she got a good maid?" asked the doctor.
"An excitable Frenchwoman, but otherwise useful." They were at the front door now.
"And you really ought to go to-morrow?"
"I ought," said May, and her heart seemed to be sinking low down—lower and lower.
"Very well," said the doctor, "I suppose we must let you go, Mrs. Dashwood," and as he spoke he pulled the door wide open. "Here is the Warden!" he said.
There was the Warden coming in at the gate. Maywas standing so that she could not see into the court. She started at the doctor's remark.
"I'll speak to him," he said, and, bowing, he went down the steps, leaving the door open behind him. May turned away and walked upstairs. She wouldn't have to tell the Warden that she was going to-morrow; the doctor would tell him, of course. Would he care?
She went back to the bedroom, and Lady Dashwood looked round eagerly at her, but did not ask her any questions.
"Now, dear, pour out the tea," she said. "The doctor was a great interruption. My dear May, I wish I wasn't such an egotist."
"You aren't," said May, sitting down and pouring out two cups of tea.
"I am," said Lady Dashwood.
"Why?" asked May.
"Well, you see," said Lady Dashwood, "I was terribly upset about Belinda and Co., because Belinda and Co. had pushed her foot in at my front door, or rather at Jim's front door; but she's gone now, as far as I'm personally concerned. She's a thing of the past. But, and here it comes, Belindas are still rampant in the world, and there are male as well as female Belindas; and I bear it wonderfully. I shall quite enjoy a cup of tea. Thanks, darling."
"If anybody were to come and say to you," said May, looking deeply into her cup, "'Will you join a Society for the painless extermination of Belindas—Belindas of both classes—Belindas in expensive furs, and tattered Belindas,' wouldn't you become a member, or at least give a guinea?"
Lady Dashwood smiled a little. "Dear May, how satirical you are with your poor old aunt!"
"I'm not satirical," said May.
"I'm afraid," groaned Lady Dashwood, "it'smainly because we think things will be made straight in the next world that we don't do enough here. Now, I haven't that excuse, May, because you know I never have looked forward to the next world. Somehow I can't!"
Something in her aunt's voice made May look round at her.
"Don't be sorrowful, dear," she said.
"Now that I've slanged Belinda," murmured Lady Dashwood, "I've begun to think about my own short-comings."
"Nonsense, dear aunt," said May. "You are not accustomed to think about yourself; it must be a sign that you are not feeling well. I shall ring for Louise." May spoke in a bantering voice, but her eyes did not smile.
"For mercy's sake, don't," said Lady Dashwood.
The glow had faded from the roof of the college opposite, and had become grey and cold when May got up and took the little tea tray from her Aunt Lena's bed.
"Now, I've got just a few lines more to add to my letter to my old dear one," said Lady Dashwood. "Suppose you go down and see what's happening?"
"What's happening!" said May, but she did not ask a question, merely she repeated her aunt's words.
"Yes, dear," said Lady Dashwood. "What's happening. All sorts of things happen, you know; things go on! Please ring, I want Louise to clear away. Now, go down into the drawing-room and, if you see Jim, give him my love."
May went into the empty drawing-room and sat there till it grew dark, doing nothing. Robinson came in to make up the fire and draw the curtains. He apologised for his lateness, explaining that he did not think any one was in the drawing-room.
"Will you have dinner with 'er ladyship?" he asked, "or in the dining-room, m'm? The Warden is dining in 'all."
May walked to a little table and took up one of the books that were lying there.
"Upstairs, please, Robinson," she answered.
She began looking through the book, turning over the pages, but the print seemed unintelligible. She stood listening to Robinson's movements in the room. Then the door opened and the Warden came in and startled her so much that she dropped the book upon the table.
He was in his gown, just come back from chapel. He came some way into the room and stood at a little distance from her. She did not look at him, though she turned towards him in acknowledgment of his presence.
"Wasn't the sunset wonderful?" she said.
"It was a wonderful sunset!" he said.
Robinson was still busy in the room, and the Warden moved to the fireplace and stood looking as if he was undecided whether to stay or to go.
"I'm sorry I have to dine out this evening," said the Warden. "I have no choice in the matter, unfortunately."
"Of course," said May. "Please don't think of me. I have Aunt Lena to look after."
"You are very good to her," he said, and lingered for a moment.
Robinson was now going towards the door with his soft, light, though rather shambling movements.
The Warden moved towards the door too, and then stopped and said—
"There isn't anything I can do for you, any book I can lend you for this evening?"
"No, thanks very much," said May. "I have all I want," and she took up the book she had droppedwith an air of wanting it very much, and went towards the chair she had been sitting in before Robinson disturbed her.
The Warden swung himself round. She could hear the sound of his robe against the lintel of the door as he went out and left her alone. He might have stayed a few minutes if he had wished! He didn't wish!
When she went to her Aunt Lena's bedroom, half an hour later, she found that he had been there, sitting with her and talking, and had gone five minutes ago. The Warden seemed to move like some one in a dream. He came and went and never stayed.
During dinner Lady Dashwood said, not à propos of anything—
"Your poor Uncle John is beginning to get restive, and I suppose I shall have to go back to him in a few days. Having done all the mischief that I could, I suppose it is time I should leave Oxford. Louise will be glad and Jim will be sorry, I am afraid. I haven't broken to him yet that my time is coming to an end. I really dread telling him. It was different when he was a college tutor—he had only rooms then. Now he has a house. It's very dismal for him to be alone."
Here Lady Dashwood stopped abruptly and went on eating. About nine o'clock she professed to be ready "to be put to bed," and May, who had been knitting by her side, got up and prepared to leave her for the night.
As she kissed her she wondered why her Aunt Lena had never asked her how long she was going to stay. Why hadn't she told her after seeing the doctor, and got it over? The Warden knew and yet did not say a word, but that was different!
Should she tell her aunt now? She hesitated. No, it might perhaps make her wakeful. It would be better to give her nothing to think about. There wouldbe time to-morrow. She would tell her before breakfast, on the way downstairs. It would be giving her long enough notice if she put off her journey till the late afternoon. And therewasno need to leave on Monday till the late afternoon.
"You are going down into the drawing-room again?" said Lady Dashwood.
"Yes; you must sleep well, dear," said May, bending down and kissing her.