Kitabı oku: «The New Warden», sayfa 11
CHAPTER XVI
SEEING CHRIST CHURCH
Boreham had been very successful that afternoon. He had managed to secure Mrs. Dashwood without having to be rude to her hostess. He had done it by exchanging Mrs. Potten for the younger lady with a deftness on which he congratulated himself, though it was true that Lady Dashwood had said to May Dashwood, "Go and see over the College with Mr. Boreham."
Miss Scott was, most fortunately, absorbed in playing at shop with Mrs. Harding.
Boreham's course was clear. He calculated with satisfaction that he had a good hour before him alone with Mrs. Dashwood. He could show her every corner of Christ Church and do it slowly; the brief explanation (of a disparaging nature) that he would be obliged to make on the details of that historic building would only serve to help him out at, perhaps, difficult moments. It would be easier for him to talk freely and prepare her mind for a proper appreciation of the future which lay before her, while he walked beside her and pointed out irrelevant things, than it would have been if he had been obliged to sit still in a chair facing her, for example, and stick to his subject. It seemed to him best to begin by speaking quite frankly in praise of himself. Boreham had his doubts whether any man is really humble in his estimation of himself, however much he may pretend to be; and if, indeed, any man were truly humble, then, in Boreham's opinion, that man was a fool.
As soon as they had crossed St. Aldates and had entered the gate under Tom Tower, Boreham introduced the subject of his own merits, by glancing round the great quadrangle and remarking that he was thankful that he had never been subjected to the fossilising routine of a classical education.
"The study of dead languages is a 'cul-de-sac,'" he explained. "You can see the effect it has had in the very atmosphere of Oxford. You can see the effect it has had on Middleton, dear fellow, who got a double First, and the Ireland, and everything else proper and useless, and who is now – what? A conscientious schoolmaster, and nothing more!"
It was necessary to bring Middleton in because May Dashwood might not have had the time or the opportunity of observing all Middleton's limitations. She probably would imagine that he was a man of ideas and originality. She would take for granted (not knowing) that the head of an Oxford College was a weighty person, a successful person. Also Middleton was a good-looking-man, as good-looking as he, Boreham, was himself (only of a more conventional type), and therefore not to be despised from the mere woman's point of view.
Boreham peered eagerly at his companion's profile to see how she took this criticism of Middleton.
May was taking it quite calmly, and even smiled. "So far, good," said Boreham to himself, and he went on to compare his larger view of life and deeper knowledge of "facts" with the restricted outlook of the Oxford Don. This she apparently accepted as "understood," for she smiled again, and this triumph of Boreham's was achieved while they looked over the Christ Church library.
"The first thing," said Boreham, when they came again into the open air – "the first thing that a man has to do is to be a man of the world that we actually live in, not of the world as it was!"
"Yes," said Mrs. Dashwood "the world we actually live in."
"You agree?" he said brightly.
She smiled again.
"Oxford might have been vitalised; might, I say, if, by good luck, somebody had discovered a coal mine under the Broad, or the High, and the University had been compelled to adjust itself to the practical requirements of the world of labour and of commerce, and to drop its mediæval methods for those of the modern world."
May confessed that she had not thought of this way of improving the ancient University, but she suggested that some of the provincial universities had the advantage of being in the neighbourhood of coal mines or in industrial centres.
Boreham, however, waived the point, for his spirits were rising, and the sight of Bingham in the distance, carrying his table-cloth and slippers and looking wistfully at nothing in particular, gave him increased confidence in his main plan.
"This staircase," said Boreham, "leads to the hall. Shall we go in? I suppose you ought to see it."
"What a lovely roof!" exclaimed May, when they reached the foot of the staircase.
Boreham admitted that it was fine, but he insisted that it was too good for the place, and he went on with his main discourse.
When they entered the dining-hall, the dignity of the room, with its noble ceiling, its rich windows and the glow of the portraits on the walls, brought another exclamation from May's lips.
But all this academic splendour annoyed Boreham extremely. It seemed to jeer at him as an outsider.
"It's too good for the collection of asses who dine here," he said.
As to the portraits, he insisted that among them all, among all these so-called distinguished men, there was not one that possessed any real originality and power – except perhaps the painter Watts.
"It's so like Oxford," he added, "to produce nothing distinctive."
May laughed now, with a subdued laughter that was a little irritating, because it was uncalled for.
"I am laughing," she explained, "because 'the world we actually live in' is such a funny place and is so full of funny people – ourselves included."
That was not a reason for laughter if it were true, and it was not true that she was, or that he was "funny." If she had been "funny" he would not have been in love with her. He detained her in front of the portrait of Wesley.
"I wonder they have had the sense to keep him here," said Boreham. "He is a perpetual reminder to them of the scandalous torpor of the Church which repudiated him. Yes, I wonder they tolerate him. Anyhow, I suppose they tolerate him because, after all, they tolerate anybody who tries to keep alive a lost cause. Religion was dying a natural death and, instead of letting it die, he revived it for a bit. It was as good as you could expect from an Oxford man! When an Oxford man revolts, he only revolts in order to take up some lost cause, some survival!"
"I suppose," said May, "that if Wesley had had the advantage of being at one of the provincial colleges, he would have invented a new soap, instead of strewing the place with nonconformist chapels?"
This sarcasm of May's would have been exasperating, only that the mention of soap quite naturally suggested children who had to be soaped, and children did bring Boreham actually to an important point. He did not really care two straws about Wesley. He went straight for this point. He put a few piercing questions to May about her work among children in London. Strangely enough she did not respond. She gave him one or two brief answers of the vaguest description, while she turned away to look at more portraits. Boreham, however, had only put the questions as a delicate approach to the subject. He did not really want any answers, and he proceeded to point out to her that her work, though it was undertaken in the most altruistic spirit, and appeared to be useful to the superficial observer, was really not helpful but harmful to the community. And this for two reasons. He would explain them. Firstly, because it blinded people who were interested in social questions to the need for the endowment of mothers; and secondly, the care of other women's children did not really satisfy the maternal instinct in women. It excited their emotions and gave them the impression that these emotions were satisfying. They were not. He hinted that if May would consult any pathologist he would tell her that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a life like hers, seemingly so full, would not save a woman from the disastrous effects of being childless.
Now, Boreham was convinced that women rarely understand what it is they really want. Women believe that they want to become clerks or postmen or lawyers, when all the time what they want and need is to become mothers. For instance, it was a common thing for a woman who had no interest in drama and who couldn't act, to want to be an actress. What she really wanted then was an increased opportunity of meeting the other sex.
Boreham put this before May Dashwood, and was gratified at the reception of his remarks.
"What you say is true," she said, "though so few people have the courage to say it."
Boreham went on. He felt that May Dashwood, in spite of all her sharpness, was profoundly ignorant of her own psychology. It was necessary to enlighten her, to make her understand that it was not her duty to go on mourning for a husband who was dead, but that it was her duty to make the best of her own life. He entirely exonerated her from the charge of humbug in her desire to mother slum children; all he wanted was for her to understand that it wasn't of any use either to herself or to the community. How well she was taking it!
He had barely finished speaking when he became unpleasantly aware that two ladies, who had just entered, were staring at himself and his companion instead of examining the hall. The strangers were foreigners, to judge by the boldness with which they wore hats that bore no relation to the shape or the dignity of the human head. They were evidently arrested and curious.
May did not speak for some moments, after they both moved away from the portraits. Boreham watched her, rather breathlessly, for things were going right and coming to a crisis.
"You are quite right," she repeated, at last. "But people haven't the courage to say so!"
"You think so?" he replied eagerly. He now appreciated, as he had never done before, how much he scored by possessing, along with the subtle intuitions of the Celt, the plain common-sense of his English mother.
"I am preparing my mind," said May, as they approached the door of the hall, "to face a future chequered by fits of hysteria."
"But why!" urged Boreham, and he could not conceal his agitation; "when I spoke of the endowment of mothers I did not mean that I personally wanted any interference (at present) with our system of monogamy. The British public thinks it believes in monogamy and I, personally, think that monogamy is workable, under certain circumstances. It would be possible for me under certain circumstances."
The sublimity of his self-sacrifice almost brought tears to Boreham's eyes. May quickened her steps, and he opened the door for her to go into the lobby. As he went through himself he could see that the two strangers had turned and were watching them. He damned them under his breath and pulled the door to.
"There are women," he went on, as he followed her down the stairs, "who have breadth of character and brains that command the fidelity of men. I need not tell you this."
May was descending slowly and looked as if she thought she was alone.
"'Age cannot wither, nor custom stale thy infinite variety,'" he whispered behind her, and he found the words strangely difficult to pronounce because of his emotion. He moved alertly into step with her and gazed at her profile.
"When that is said to a woman, well, a moderately young woman," remarked May, "a woman who is, say, twenty-eight – I am twenty-eight – it has no point I am afraid!"
"No point?" exclaimed Boreham.
"No point," repeated May. "How do you know that thirty years from now, when I am on the verge of sixty, that I shan't be withered – unless, indeed, I get too stout?" she added pensively.
"You will always be young," said Boreham, fervently; "young, like Ninon de l'Enclos."
May had now reached the ground, and she walked out on to the terrace into open daylight.
Boreham was at her side immediately, and she turned and looked at him. His pale blue eyes blinked at her, for he was aware that hers were hostile! Why?
"You would seem young to me," he said, trying to feel brave.
"Men and women ought," she said, with emphasis on the word "ought" – "men and women ought to wither and grow old in the service of Humanity. I think nothing is more pathetic than the sight of an old woman trying to look young instead of learning the lesson of life, the lesson we are here to learn!"
Boreham had had barely time to recover from the blow when she added in the sweetest tone —
"There, that's a scolding for you and for Ninon de l'Enclos!"
"But I don't mean – " began Boreham. "I haven't put it – you don't take my words quite correctly."
May was already walking on into the open archway that led to the cathedral. Before them stood the great western doors, and she saw them and stopped. Boreham wished to goodness that he had waited till they were in the cathedral before he had made his quotation. Through the open doors of that ancient building he could hear somebody playing the organ. That would have been the proper emotional accompaniment for those immortal lines of Shakespeare. He pictured a corner of the Latin chapel and an obscure tender light. Why had he begun to talk in the glare of a public thoroughfare?
"Shall we go inside?" he asked urgently. "One can't talk here."
But May turned to go back. "I should like to see the cathedral some other time," she said. "I must thank you very much for having shown me over the College – and – explained everything."
"Yes; but – " stammered Boreham. "We can get into the cathedral."
She was actually beginning to hold out her hand as if to say Good-bye.
"Not now," she said; and before he had time to argue further, Bingham came suddenly upon them from somewhere, and expressed so much surprise at seeing them that it was evident that he had been on the watch. He had disposed of his purchases and was a free man. He had actually pounced upon them like a bird of prey – and stealthily too. It was a mean trick to have played.
"Are you coming out or going in?" asked Bingham.
"Neither," said May, turning to him as if she was glad of his approach.
"You've seen it before?" said Bingham.
"No, not yet," said May.
"It's as nice a place as you could find anywhere," said Bingham, calmly, "for doing a bit of Joss."
Boreham's brain surged with indignation. This man's intrusion at such a moment was insupportable. Yes, and he had got rid of his miserable table-cloth and shoes, probably taken them to Harding's house, and was going to tea there too. Not only this, but here he was talking in his jesting way, exactly in the same soft drawling voice in which he reeled off Latin quotations, and so it went down – yes, went down when it ought to have given offence. May ought to have been offended. She didn't look offended!
"You forget," said Boreham, looking through his eyeglass at Bingham and frowning, "that Mrs. Dashwood is, what is called a Churchwoman."
"I'm a Churchman myself," said the imperturbable Don. "To me a church is always first a sanctuary, as I have just remarked to Mrs. Dashwood. Secondly, it is the artistic triumph of some blooming engineer. Nowadays our church architects aren't engineers; they don't create a building, they just run it up from books. Our modern churches are failures not because we aren't religious, but because our architects are not big enough men to be great engineers."
"Ah, yes," said May, looking up with relief at Bingham's swarthy features.
"I deny that we are religious, as a whole," said Boreham, stoutly.
"You may not be, my dear fellow," said Bingham, in his oily voice; "but then you are the only genuine conservative I meet nowadays. You are still faithful to the 'Eighties' – still impressed by the discovery that religion don't drop out of the sky as we thought it did, but had its origin in the funk and cunning of the humanoid ape."
May was standing between the two men, and all three had their backs to the cathedral, just as if they had emerged from its doors. And it was at this moment that she caught a sudden sight through the open archway of two figures passing along the terrace outside; one figure she did not know, but which she thought might be the Dean of Christ Church, and the other figure was one which was becoming to her more significant than any other in the world. He saw her; he raised his hat, and was already gone before she had time to think. When she did think it came upon her, with a rush of remorse, that he must have thought that she had been looking over the cathedral with her two companions, after having refused his guidance on the pretext that she wished to be alone. Yes, there was in his face surely surprise, surprise and reproach! How could she explain? He had gone! She vaguely heard the two men beside her speaking; she heard Boreham's protesting voice but did not follow his words.
"While we are engaged in peaceful persuasion," said Bingham in her ear, "you are white with fatigue."
"I'm not tired," she said, "not really – only I think I will go to the rooms where Lady Dashwood is to meet me. Will you show me them?"
She spoke to Bingham, and touched his arm with her hand as if to ask for his support.
Boreham saw that he was excluded. It was obvious, and he stood staring after them, full of indignation.
"I shall see you later," he said in a dry voice. How did it all happen?
As soon as they were on the terrace, May released Bingham's arm.
"You want to get a rest before you go to the Hardings," he said. Then he added, in a voice that threw out the words merely as a remark which demanded no answer, "Was it physical – or – moral or both? Umph!" he went on. "Now, we have only a step to make. It's the third doorway!"
CHAPTER XVII
A TEA PARTY
Mrs. Harding had not succeeded in finding some chance of "casually" asking Mrs. Potten to have tea with her, but she had secured the Dashwoods. That was something. Mrs. Harding's drawing-room was spacious and looked out on the turreted walls of Christ Church. The house witnessed to Mrs. Harding's private means.
"We have got Lady Dashwood in the further room," she murmured to some ladies who arrived punctually from the Sale in St. Aldates, "and we nearly got the Warden of Kings."
The naïveté of Mrs. Harding's remark was quite unconscious, and was due to that absence of humour which is the very foundation stone of snobbishness.
"But the Warden is coming to fetch his party home," added Mrs. Harding, cheerfully.
Harding, too, was in good spirits. He was all patriotism and full of courteous consideration for his friends. So heartened was he that, after tea, at the suggestion of Bingham, he sat down to the piano to sing a duet with his wife. This was also a sort of touching example of British respectability with a dash of "go" in it!
Bingham was turning over some music.
"What shall it be, Tina?" asked Harding, whose repertoire was limited.
"This!" said Bingham, and he placed on the piano in front of Hording the duet from "Becket."
The room was crowded, khaki prevailing. "All the women are workers," Mrs. Harding had explained.
Gwendolen Scott was there, of course, still conscious of the ten-shilling note in the pocket of her coat. Mrs. Potten had gone, along with the Buckinghamshire collar, just as if neither had ever existed. Boreham was there, talking to one or two men in khaki, because he could not get near May Dashwood. She had now somehow got wedged into a corner over which Bingham was standing guard.
At the door the Warden had just made his appearance. He had got no further than the threshold, for he saw his hostess about to sing and would not advance to disturb her.
From where he stood May Dashwood could be plainly seen, and Bingham stooping with his hands on his knees, making an inaudible remark to her.
The remark that gentleman was actually making was: "You'll have a treat presently – the greatest surprise in your life."
Mrs. Harding stood behind her husband. She was dressed with strict regard to the last fashion. Dressing in each fashion as it came into existence she used to call quite prettily, "the simple truth about it." Since the war she called it frankly and seriously "the true economy." Her face usually expressed a superior self-assurance, and now it wore also a look of indulgent amiability. Her whole appearance suggested a happy peacock with its tail spread, and the surprise which Bingham predicted came when she opened her mouth and, instead of emitting screams in praise of diamonds and of Paris hats (as one would have expected), she piped in a small melancholy voice the following pathetic inquiry —
"Is it the wind of the dawn that I hear in the pine overhead?"
And then came Harding's growling baritone, avoiding any mention of cigars or cocktails and making answer —
"No! but the noise of the deep as it hollows the cliffs of the land."
Mrs. Harding —
"Is there a voice coming up with the voice of the deep from the strand,
One coming up with the song in the flush of the glimmering red?"
Mr. Harding —
"Love that is born of the deep coming up with the sun from the sea."
Bingham was convulsed with inward laughter. May tried to smile a little – at the incongruity of the singers and the words they sang; but her thoughts were all astray. The Warden was here – so near!
No one else was in the least amused. Boreham was plainly worried, and was staring through his eyeglass at Bingham's back, behind which May Dashwood was half obliterated. Gwendolen Scott had only just caught sight of the Warden and had flushed up, and wore an excited look on her face. She was glancing at him with furtive glances – ready to bow. Now she caught his eye and bowed, and he returned the bow very gravely.
Lady Dashwood was leaning back in her chair listening with resigned misery.
May looked straight before her, past Bingham's elbow. She knew the song from Becket well. Words in the song were soon coming that she dreaded, because of the Warden standing there by the door.
The words came —
"Love that is born of the deep coming up with the sun from the sea,
Love that can shape or can shatter a life till the life shall have fled."
She raised her eyes to the Warden. She could see his profile. It looked noble among the faces around him, as he stood with his head bent, apparently very much aloof, absorbed in his own thoughts.
He, of all men she had ever met, ought to have understood "love that is born of the deep," and did not. He turned his head slightly and met her eyes for the flash of a second. It was the look of a man who takes his last look.
She did not move, but she grasped the arms of her chair and heard no more of the music but sounds, vaguely drumming at her ears, without meaning.
She did not even notice Bingham's movement, the slow cautious movement with which he turned to see what had aroused her emotion. When he knew, he made a still more cautious and imperceptible movement away from her; the movement of a man who discerns that he had made a step too far and wishes to retrace that step without being observed.
May did not even notice that the song was over and that people were talking and moving about.
"We are going, May," said Lady Dashwood. "Mr. Boreham has to go and hunt for a ten-shilling note that Mrs. Potten thinks she dropped at Christ Church. She has just sent me a letter about it. She can't remember the staircase. In any case we have to go and pick up our purchases there, so we are all going together."
"She's always dropping things," said Boreham, who had taken the opportunity of coming up and speaking to May. "She may have lost the note anywhere between here and Norham Gardens. She's incorrigible."
The little gathering was beginning to melt away. Harding and Bingham had hurried off on business, and there was nobody now left but Boreham and the party from King's and Mrs. Harding, who was determined to help in the search for Mrs. Potten's lost note.
"Miss Scott is coming back with me – to help wind up things at the Sale," said Mrs. Harding, "and on our way we will go in and help you."
Gwendolen's first impulse, when Mrs. Potten's note was discussed, was to get behind somebody else so as not to be seen. Would Mr. Harding and Mr. Bingham remember about the extra note? Probably – so her second impulse was to say aloud: "I wonder if it's the note I quite forgot to give to Mrs. Potten? I've got it somewhere." Alas! this impulse was short-lived. Ever since she had put the note in her pocket, the mental image of an umbrella had been before her eyes. She had begun to consider that mental umbrella as already a real umbrella and hers. She walked about already, in imagination, under it. She might have planned to spend money that had fallen into her hands on sweets. That would have been the usual thing; but no, she was going to spend it on something very useful and necessary. That ten shillings, in fact, so carelessly flung aside by Mrs. Potten, was going to be spent in a way very few girls would think of. To spend it on an umbrella was wonderfully virtuous and made the whole affair a sort of duty.
The umbrella, in short, had become now part of Gwendolen's future. Virtue walking with an umbrella. Without that umbrella there would be a distinct blank in Gwendolen's life!
If she obeyed her second impulse on the moment, that umbrella would never become hers. She would for ever lose that umbrella. But neither Mr. Harding nor Mr. Bingham seemed to think of her, or her note. They were already rushing off to lectures or chapels or something. The impulse died!
So the poor silly child pretended to search in the rooms at Christ Church with no less energy than Mrs. Harding and Mrs. Dashwood, and much more thoroughly than Boreham, who did nothing more than put up the lights and stand about looking gloomy.
The Warden was walking slowly with Lady Dashwood on the terrace below when the searchers came out announcing that no note could be found.
Boreham's arms were full of parcels, and these were distributed among the Warden, Lady Dashwood, and Mrs. Dashwood.
Mrs. Harding said "good-bye" outside the great gate.
"I shall bring Miss Scott home, after the work is over," she said; and Gwendolen glanced at the Warden in the fading afternoon light with some confidence, for was not the affair of the note over? What more could happen? She could not be certain whether he looked at her or not. He moved away the moment that Mrs. Harding had ceased speaking. He bowed, and in another moment was talking to Mr. Boreham.
May Dashwood had slipped her hand into her aunt's arm, making it obvious to Boreham that he and the Warden must walk on ahead, or else walk behind. They walked on ahead.
"I've got to fetch Mrs. Potten from Eliston's," he said fretfully, as he walked beside the Warden. All four went along in silence. They passed Carfax. There, a little farther on, was Mrs. Potten just at the shop's door, looking out keenly through her glasses, peering from one side of the street to the other.
She came forward to meet them, evidently charmed at seeing the Warden.
"I'm afraid I made a great fuss over that note. Did you find it, Bernard?"
Boreham felt too cross to answer.
"We didn't," said May Dashwood. "I'm sorry!"
"No, we couldn't find it," said Lady Dashwood.
"You really couldn't," repeated Mrs. Potten. "Well, I wonder – But how kind of you!"
Now, Mrs. Potten rarely saw the Warden, and this fact made her prize him all the more. Mrs. Potten's weakness for men was very weak for the Warden, so much so that for the moment she forgot the loss of her note, and – thinking of Wardens – burst into a long story about the Heads of colleges she had known personally and those she had not known personally.
Her assumption that Heads of colleges were of any importance was all the more distasteful to Boreham because May Dashwood was listening.
"Come along, Mrs. Potten," he said crossly; "we shall have to have the lamps lit if we wait any longer."
But they were not her lamps that would have to be lit, burning her oil, and Mrs. Potten released the Warden with much regret.
"So the poor little note was never found," she said, as she held out her hand for good-bye. "I know it's a trifle, but in these days everything is serious, everything! And after I had scribbled off my note to you from Eliston's I thought I might have given Miss Scott two ten-shilling notes instead of one, just by mistake, and that she hadn't noticed, of course."
"I thought of that," said Lady Dashwood, "and I asked Mrs. Harding; but she said that she had got the correct notes – thirty shillings."
"Well, good-bye," said Mrs. Potten. "I am sorry to have troubled everybody, but in war time one has to be careful. One never knows what may happen. Strange things have happened and will happen. Don't you think so, Warden?"
"Stranger than perhaps we think of," said the Warden, and he raised his hat to go.
"Come, Bernard," said Mrs. Potten, "I must try and tear you away. Good-bye, good-bye!" and even then she lingered and looked at the Warden.
"Good-bye, Marian," said Lady Dashwood, firmly.
"I am afraid you are very tired," whispered May in her aunt's ear, as they turned up the Broad.
"Rather tired," said Lady Dashwood. "Too tired to hear Marian's list of names, nothing but names!"
They walked on a few steps, and then there came a sound of whirring in the sky. It was a sound new to Oxford, but which had lately become frequent. All three looked up. An aeroplane was skimming low over steeples, towers, and ancient chimney stacks, going home to Port Meadow, like a bird going home to roost at the approach of night. It was going safely. The pilot was only learning, playing with air, overcoming it with youthful keenness and light-heartedness. They could see his little solitary figure sitting at the helm. Later on he would play no more; the air would be full of glory, and horror – over in France.
The Warden sighed.
When they reached the Lodgings they went into the gloom of the dark panelled hall. The portraits on the walls glowered at them. The Warden put up the lights and looked at the table for letters, as if he expected something. There was a wire for him; more business, but not unexpected.
"I have to go to Town again," he said. "A meeting and other education business."
"Ah!" said Lady Dashwood. She caught at the idea, and her eyes followed the figure of May Dashwood walking upstairs. When May turned out of sight she said: "Do you mean now?"
