"Oh, very well," said Lady Dashwood, closing her eyes.
Later on disturbing thoughts came to her. Why had May ceased to show any emotion? Why had she become quiet and self-contained? That wasn't a good sign. And what about to-morrow? Did she mean to go? She had said nothing, but she might have made up her mind to go. And there was Jim going in and out and doingnothing! Oh, why couldn't the dear things see that they were made for one another? Why couldn't they go about mysterious, blown up with self-importance—and engaged?
When Louise came in she found her mistress still awake.
"Louise, before you settle me, see if Mrs. Dashwood has gone to bed. Don't disturb her, of course."
"Bien, Madame," said Louise; and she left the room with the air of one who is going to fathom a mystery.
"What a nuisance Louise is," sighed Lady Dashwood, turning on her pillow. She did not turn her head again when Louise came back.
"Madameis not in her room," said Louise, in a voice of profound interest, and she waited to hear the result.
"Oh!" said Lady Dashwood, brightening a little. "Well, Louise, light a night light and leave it at the other end of the room, so that the light doesn't comeon my face! I don't want to be in complete darkness or the Warden will not come in. He will think I am asleep."
"Madamewill not sleep?" demanded Louise.
"Of course I shall sleep," said Lady Dashwood, and she began thinking again.
When May went back again to the drawing-room she did not sit down immediately but walked round, taking up the books that were lying about. Some she had read, and the book she had taken up by accident before dinner did not interest her. She took up one after another and read the title, and then, seeing a small soft yellow volume full of verse, she carried it with her to her chair. She might be able to read and follow something slight; she could not concentrate herself on anything that needed thought.
She opened the volume. It was an anthology of Victorian verse. She began looking through it. She read and read—at least she turned over page after page, following the sense here and there. Books could not distract her from painful thoughts about herself; hard work with hands and eyes, work such as hers would be able to distract her. She was relying upon it to do so; she felt that her work was her refuge. She was thankful that she had a refuge—very thankful, and yet she was counting how many more hours she still had before her in Oxford. There she showed her weakness; she knew that every hour in Oxford meant pain, and yet she did not want to go away! At last she had turned over all the pages and had come to the last page. There her eyes were caught, and they held on to some printed words. She read! The wordswere like the echo of a voice, a voice that thrilled her even in memory!
"And the Glory of the Lord shall be all in all."
"And the Glory of the Lord shall be all in all."
She read the poem through and through again. It took hold of her.
She sat musing over it. The clock struck ten. To sit on and on was like waiting for him! She resented the thought bitterly. She rose from her chair, meaning to take the book up with her to her room. To have it beside her would be a little consolation. She would read it through again the last thing before trying to sleep. She was already walking to the door, very slowly, her will compelling unwilling limbs.
"You are just going?" said the Warden's voice. He had suddenly opened the door and stood before her.
"I was going," she said, and held on to the book, open as it was at the last page. "Have you just come back from dinner?"
"I have just come back," he said, and he closed the door behind him. But he stayed near the door, for May was standing just where she had stood when he came in, the book in her hand. "I regretted very much that you should be alone this last evening of your stay——" He paused and looked at her.
"I ought to have asked some one to dine with you. I am so little accustomed to guests, but I ought to have thought of it."
"I am used to being alone in the evening," said May, now smoothing the page of her book with her free hand. "Except on Saturdays and Sundays, when I go to friends of mine, I am usually alone—and generally glad to be, after my day's work. Besides, I have been with Aunt Lena this evening. I only left her an hour ago."
He came nearer and stood looking at her and at the book in her hands. He seemed suddenly torecognise the book, and saw that it was open at the last page.
"I ought not to have quoted that to you," he said in a low voice; "those words of that poem—there under your hand."
"Why not?" she asked, shutting the book up and holding it closed between her hands. "Why shouldn't you have quoted it?" and she looked at the book intently, listening for his voice again.
"Because it savoured of self-righteousness, and that was not becoming in a man who had brought his own troubles upon himself."
May did not look up at him; she felt, too keenly the poignancy of that brief confession, dignified in its simplicity, a confession that a weaker man would have been afraid to make, and a man of less intelligence could not have made because he would not have understood the dignity of it. May found no words with which to speak to him; she could only look at the carpet stupidly and admire him with all the pulses in her body.
"Your interpretation of 'the Glory of the Lord' is the right one; I think—I feel convinced of it."
He stood before her, wearing a curiously pathetic expression of diffidence.
That moment passed, and then he seemed to force himself back into his old attitude of courteous reserve.
"You were just going when I came in," he said, moving and putting out his hand to open the door for her. "I am keeping you."
"I was going," said May, "but, Dr. Middleton——"
He let his arm drop. "Yes?" he said.
"You have, I am afraid, a totally wrong idea of me."
He stared straight into her face as she spoke, but it was his veiled stare, in which he held himself aloof for reasons of his own.
"I don't think so," he said quickly.
"I talked about 'my interpretation' of the words you quoted," she said, "just as if I spoke from some special knowledge, from personal experience, I mean. I had no intention of giving you that idea; it was merely athoughtI expressed."
How could she say what her heart was full of without betraying herself? He was waiting for her to speak with a strained look in his eyes.
"And, of course, any one can 'think.' I am afraid——Somehow—I find it impossible to say what I mean—I—I am horribly stupid to-night."
She moved forward and he opened the door, and held it open for her. She went out with only a brief "Good-night," because no more words would come. She had said all she was able to say, and now she walked along trying to get her breath again. In the corridor she came upon Louise, who seemed to have sprung suddenly from nowhere.
"Can I assistMadame?" said Louise, her face full of unrestrained curiosity. "Can I brushMadame'shair?"
May made one or two more steps without finding her voice, then she said—
"No, thank you, Louise." And feeling more than seeing the Frenchwoman's ardent stare of interrogation, she added: "Louise, you may bring back my travelling things, please, the first thing to-morrow morning. I shall want them."
Louise was silent for a moment, just as a child is voiceless for a moment before it bursts into shrieks. She followed May to her door.
"I shall pack everything forMadame," she exclaimed, and her voice twanged like steel. She followed May into her bedroom. "I shall pack everything whenMadamegoes truly." Here she glanced round the room, and her large dark eyes rested with wildindignation on the little stained figure of St. Joseph standing on the table by the bed.
The small pathetic saint stood all unconscious, its machine-made face looking down amiably upon the branch of lilies in its hands.
"I want them early," said May, "because I prefer to pack myself, Louise. You are such a kind creature, but I really prefer waiting upon myself."
"I shall pack forMadame," repeated Louise.
May went to the toilet table and put down the book that she was carrying.
"Good night, Louise," was all she said.
Louise moved. She groaned, then she took hold of the door and began to withdraw herself behind it.
"I wishMadamea good repose. I shall pack forMadame, comme il faut," she said with superb obstinacy, and she closed the door after her.
Good repose! Repose seemed to May the last word that was suitable. Fall asleep she might, for she was strong and full of vigour, but repose——!
She read the poem once again through when she was in bed. Then she laid the book under the pillow and turned out the light.
How many hours had she still in Oxford? About seventeen hours. And even when she was back again at her work—sundered for ever from the place that she had learned to love better than any other place in the world—she would have something precious to remember. Even if they never met again after those seventeen hours were over, even though they never saw each other's faces again, she would have something to remember: words of his spoken only to her, words that betrayed the fineness of his nature. Those words of his belonged to her.
And it was in this spirit of resignation, held more fully than before, that she met him again at breakfast.She was in the breakfast-room first and seized the paper, determined to behave as cheerfully as if she had arrived, and not as if she was going away. She was going to make a successful effort to start her new life at once, her life with Oxford behind her. She was not going to be found by him, when he entered, silent and reminiscent of last evening.
When the Warden came in she put down the paper with the air of one who has seen something that suggests conversation.
"I suppose," she said, starting straight away without any preliminary but a smile at him and an inclination of her head in answer to his old-fashioned courteous bow as he entered—"I suppose when I come back to Oxford—say in ten years' time, if any one invites me—I shall find things changed. The New Oxford we talked of with Mr. Bingham will be in full swing. You will perhaps be Vice-Chancellor."
The Warden did not smile. "Ah, yes!" he remarked, and he looked abstractedly at the coffee-pot and at the chair that May was about to seat herself in. "Ah, yes!" he said again; then he added: "Have I kept you waiting?"
"Not a bit," said May.
"I ran in to see Lena," he explained.
May took her place opposite the coffee. He watched her, and then went and sat down at the opposite end of the table in his own seat. Then he got up and went to the side table.
Try as they would they were painfully conscious of each other's movements. Everything seemed strangely, cruelly important at that meal. May poured out the Warden's cup, and that in itself was momentous. He would come and take it, of course! She moved the cup a little. He waited on her from the side table and then looked at his coffee.
"Is this for me?" he asked.
"Yes," said May; "it is yours."
He took up the cup and went round with it to his place, as if he was carrying something rare and significant.
They sat opposite each other, these two, alone together, and for the last time—possibly. They talked stiffly in measured sentences to each other, talk that merely served as a defence. And behind this talk both were painfully aware that the precious moments were slipping away, and yet nothing could be done to stay them. It was only when the meal was over, and there was nothing left for them to do but to rise and go, that they stopped talking and looked at each other apprehensively.
"You are not going till the afternoon?" he questioned.
"Not till the afternoon," she answered, but she did not say whether she was going early or late. She rose from the table and stood by it.
"The reason why I ask," he said, rising too, "is that I cannot be at home for lunch, and afterwards there is hospital business with which I am concerned."
May had as yet only vaguely decided on her train, though she knew the trains by heart. She had now to fix it definitely, it was wrung from her.
"I may not be able to get back in time to go with you to the station, but I hope to be in time to meet you there, to see you off," he said; and he added: "I hope to be in time," as if he doubted it nevertheless.
"You mustn't make a point of seeing me off," said May. "And don't you think railway-stations are places which one avoids as much as possible?" She asked the question a little tremulously and smiled, but did not look at him.
"Ours is pretty bad," he said, without a smile. "But I hope it won't have the effect of making you forget that there is any beauty in our old city. I hopeyou will carry away with you some regret at parting—some memory of us."
"Of course I shall," said May; and detecting the plaintiveness of her own voice, she added: "I shall have to come and see it again—as I said—perhaps ten years hence, when—when it will be different! It will be most interesting."
He moved slowly away as if he was going out, and then stopped.
"I shall manage to be in time to see you off," he said, as if some alteration in his plans suddenly occurred to him. "I shall manage it."
"You mustn't put off anything important for me," May called softly after him. "In these days women don't expect to be looked after; we are getting mighty independent," and there was much courage in her voice.
He wavered at the door. "You don't forbid me to come?" he questioned, and he turned and looked at her.
"Of course not," said May, and she turned away quickly and went to the window and looked out. "I hope I am not brazenly independent!" She added this last sentence airily at the window and stared out of it, as if attracted by something in the quadrangle.
She heard him go out and shut the door.
She waited some little time doing nothing, standing still by the window—very still. Then she went out of the room, up the staircase and into the corridor towards her aunt's bedroom.
She knocked and went in.
Lady Dashwood turned round and looked at her. Something in May's face arrested her.
"A lovely morning, May. Just the day for seeing Oxford at its best."
And this forced May to say, at once, what she was going to say. She was going away in the afternoon.
Lady Dashwood received May's news quietly. She gave May a look of meek resignation that was harder to bear than any expostulation would have been.
"Everybody is going," she said slowly, and lying back on her pillows with a sigh. "I must be going directly, as soon as I am up and about. I can't leave your Uncle John alone any longer, and there is so much that even an old woman can do, and that I had to put aside to come here."
May was standing at the foot of the bed looking at her very gravely.
"I can't imagine you not doing a lot," she said.
"I shall be all right in a couple of days," said Lady Dashwood. "What was wrong with me, dear, was nerves, nerves, nothing but nerves, and I am ashamed of it. When I am bouncing with vigour again, May, I shall go. I shall leave Oxford. I shall leave Jim."
"I suppose you will have to," said May, vaguely.
"Jim will be horribly lonely," said Lady Dashwood.
"I'm afraid so," said May, slowly.
"Imagine," said Lady Dashwood, "Jim seeing me off at the station and then coming back here. Imagine him coming back alone, crunching over the gravel and going up the steps into the hall. You know what the hall is like—a sweet place—and those dim portraits on the walls all looking down at him out of their faded eyes! All men!"
May looked at her Aunt Lena gravely.
"Then see him look round! Silence—nobody there. Then see him go up that staircase. He looks into the drawing-room, that big empty room. Nobody, my dear, but that fast-looking clergyman over the fireplace. That's not all, May. I can see him go out and go to his library. Nobody there—everything silent—books—the Cardinal—and the ghost."
"Oh!" said May. She did not smile.
"Now, my dear," said Lady Dashwood, "I'm notgoing to think about it any more! I've done with it. Let's talk of something else." That, indeed, was the last that Lady Dashwood said about it.
When lunch time came May found herself seized with a physical contraction over her heart that prevented food from taking its usual course downward. She endured as long as she could, but at last she got up from the long silent table just as Robinson was about to go for a moment into the pantry. She threw a hurried excuse for going at his thin stooping back. She said she found she "hadn't time," and she examined her watch ostentatiously as she went out of the room.
"I'm going to take my last farewell of Oxford," May said, looking for a moment into Lady Dashwood's room. "I'm going for a walk. I am going to look at the High and at Magdalen Bridge."
Lady Dashwood smiled rather sadly. "Ah, yes," she said.
May found Louise packing with a slowness and an elaborate care that was a reproof somehow in itself. It seemed to say: "Ungrateful! All is thrown away on you. You care not——"
May put on her hat, and through the mirror she saw Louise rolling up Saint Joseph with some roughness in a silk muffler.
"Madamedoes not like Oxford?" said Louise, drily, as she stuffed the saint into a hat.
"I care for it very much, Louise," said May, hastily putting on her coat. "Oxford is a place one can never forget."
"Eh, bien oui," said Louise, enigmatically.
Then May went out and said farewell to the towers and spires and the ancient walls, and went to look at the trees weeping by Magdalen Bridge. It was all photographed on her memory. In the squalid streets of London, where her work lay, she would remember all this beauty and this ancient peace. There wouldbe no possibility of her forgetting it! She would dream of it at night. It would form the background of her life.
Back again in the Lodgings, she found that she had only a few minutes more to spare before she must leave. She took farewell of Louise, and left her standing, her hand clasping money and her eyes luminous with reproach. There was, indeed, more than reproach, a curious incredulity, a wonder at something. May did not fathom what it was. She did not hear Louise muttering below her breath—
"Ah, mon Dieu!these English people—thisMonsieurthe Warden—thisMadame laniece. Ah, this Lodgings! Ah, this Oxford!"
In the drawing-room May found Lady Dashwood in a loose gown, seated on a couch and "Not at home" to callers.
Only a few minutes more!
"I'm afraid I've been very long," said May. "But it is difficult to part with Oxford."
"Is it so difficult?" asked Lady Dashwood, then she suddenly pulled herself up and said: "Oh, May, a note was left just after you went out by Mrs. Potten. She wouldn't come in. Mark that, May! She had been seeing Gwendolen off. The girl has gone to her mother. Marian wants me to lunch with her to-morrow. I telephoned her a few moments ago that I would go and see her later in the week. I wonder if she wants to speak to me about Gwen? I can't help wondering. Oh dear, the whole thing seems like a dream now! Don't you think so?"
May was drinking a hurried cup of tea. "No, it seems very real to me," she said.
Lady Dashwood looked at her silently. The Warden had not returned. At least there was no sign of his being in the house.
Robinson came in to announce the taxi.
"Is the Warden in?" asked Lady Dashwood, half raising herself.
No, the Warden was not in.
"He will meet you at the station," said Lady Dashwood, nodding her head slowly at her niece.
"He may not be able to," said May, going up to the sofa. She spoke as if it were a matter of unconcern. She must keep this up. She had counselled Gwendolen to be brave! This thought brought with it a little sob of laughter that nearly choked her. "Good-bye, Aunt Lena," she said, throwing her arms round Lady Dashwood, and the two rested their heads together for a moment in a silent embrace. Then they parted.
"Good-bye," said Lady Dashwood. "Look out for poor Jim on the platform. Look out for him!"
They kissed once or twice in formal fashion, and then May walked away to the door and went out without looking back.
The door closed behind her and Lady Dashwood was left alone.
She lay back on the cushions. The sun was coming in through the windows much as it had done that afternoon when she was reading the telegram from May.
"I can't do any more," she murmured half aloud; "I can't."
Her eyes wandered to the fire and up to the portrait over the fireplace. The light falling on the painted face obliterated the shadows at the corners of the mouth, so that he seemed to be smiling.
The Warden was on his way to the station. For three days he had done what he could to keep out of May Dashwood's presence. He had invented no excuses for seeing her, he had invented reasons for not seeing her. These three days of self-restraint were almost over.
He could have returned home in time to take her to the railway-station himself if he had intended to do so. His business was over and he lingered, a desperate conscientiousness forcing him to linger. He allowed himself to be button-holed by other men, not completely aware of what was being said to him, because all the time in his imagination he saw May waiting for him. He pictured her going down the staircase to the hall and getting into her taxi alone. He pictured this while some one propounded to him plans, not only for successfully getting rid of party politics, but for the regeneration of the whole human race. It was at that point that he broke away. Some one else proposed walking back to King's with him.
"I'm going to the station," said the Warden, and he struck off by himself and began to walk faster. He had run it too close, he risked missing her altogether. That he did not intend. He meant to arrive a moment before the train started. It was surely not part of hisduty to be absolutely discourteous! He must just say "Good-bye." He began to walk still faster, for it seemed likely that he might be too late even to say "Good-bye."
In Beaumont Street a taxi was in sight. He hailed it and got in. The man seemed an outrageously long time getting the car round and started. He seemed to be playing with the curb of the pavement. At last he started.
The squalor of the approach to the station did not strike the Warden this afternoon. It always had struck him before unpleasantly. Just now he was merely aware of vehicles to be passed before he could reach the station, and he had his eyes on his watch continually to see how the moments were going. Suppose the train moved off just as he reached the platform? The Warden put his hand on the door ready to jump out. He had the fare already in the other hand. The station at last!
He got out of the taxi swiftly. No, the train was there and the platform was sprinkled with people—some men in khaki; many women. He was just in time, but only just—not in time to help her, or to speak with her or say anything more than just "Good-bye."
A sudden rage filled him. He ran his eyes along the whole length of the platform. She was probably seated in a carriage already, reading, Oxford forgotten perhaps! In that case why was he hurrying like this? Why was he raging?
No, there she was! The sight of her made his heart beat wildly. She was there, standing by an open carriage door, looking wistfully along the platform, looking for him! A porter was slamming the doors to already.
The Warden strode along and came face to face with her. Under the large brimmed hat and through the veil, he could see that she had turned ashy pale.They stared for a moment at each other desperately, and he could see that she was trembling. The porter laid his hand on the door. "Are you getting in, m'm?"
Only a week ago the Warden had committed the one rash and foolish action of his life. He had done it in ignorance of his own personal needs and with, perhaps, the unconscious cynicism of a man who has lived for forty years unable to find his true mate. But since then his mind had been lit up with the flash of a sudden poignant experience. He knew now what he wanted; what he must have, or fail. He knew that there was nothing else for him. It was this or nothing. The sight of her face, her trembling, pierced his soul with an amazing joy, and it seemed as if the voice of some invisible Controller of all human actions, great and small, breathed in his ear saying: "Now! Take your chance! This is your true destiny!"
There was no one in the carriage but a young girl at the further end huddled behind a novel. But had there been twenty there, it would not have altered his resolution. The Warden placed his hand on May's arm.
"I am travelling with this lady as far as Reading," he said to the porter, "but I have come too late to get a ticket. Tell the guard, please."
The Warden showed no sign now of haste or excitement; he had regained his usual courteous and deliberate manner, for the purpose of his life was his again. He helped her in and followed her. The door was banged behind them. There was May's little bundle of rug and umbrella on the seat. He moved it on one side so that she could sit there. The train began to slide off.
May sank into her seat too dazed to think. He sat down opposite to her. They both knew that the moment of their lives had come.
Then he leaned forward, not caring whether he was observed or not observed from the other end of thecarriage. He leaned forward and grasping both of May's hands in his, he looked into her eyes with his own slow moving, narrow eyes that absorbed the light. The corners of her mouth were trembling, her eyelids trembling.
They never spoke a word as the train moved away and left behind that fair ancient city enshrined in squalor and in raucous brick; left behind the flat meadows, the sluggish river and the leafless crooked willows; but a strange glory came from the west and flooded the whole earth and the carriage where they sat.
THE END
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected, with the exception of those contained within letters, which are thought to be deliberate.
Where a word has been spelled inconsistently within the text (e.g. to-day and today), the spellings have been changed to the one more frequently used.
All other spellings and punctuation are as in the original text.
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