Kitabı oku: «The New Warden», sayfa 15
CHAPTER XXIII
BY MOONLIGHT
May waited within the gates of the Lodgings for some moments. She did not open the door and enter the house. She walked up and down on the gravelled court. She wanted to be alone, to speak to no one just now; her heart was full of weariness and loneliness.
When she felt certain that Boreham was safely away, she went to the gates and out into the narrow street again, where she could hear subdued sounds of the evening traffic of the city.
The dusky streets had grown less dim; the shining overhead was more luminous as the moon rose.
The old buildings, as she passed them on her solitary walk, looked mysterious and aloof, as if they had been placed there magically for some secret purpose and might vanish before the dawn. This was the ancient Oxford, the Oxford of the past, the Oxford that was about to pass away, leaving priceless memories of learning and romance behind it, something that could never be again quite what it had been. Before dawn would it vanish and something else, still called Oxford, would be standing there in its place?
May was tempted to let her imagination wander thus, and to see in this mysterious Oxford the symbol of the personality of a single man, a personality that haunted her when she was alone, a personality which, when it stood before her in flesh and blood, seemed to fill space and obliterate other objects.
She had, in the chapel, re-affirmed over and over again her resolution to overcome this obsession, and now, as she walked that evening, her heart cried out for indulgence just for one brief moment, for permission to think of this personality, and to read details of it in every moonlit façade of old Oxford, in every turn of the time-worn lanes and passages.
The temptation had come upon her, because it was so dreary to be loved by Boreham. His talk seemed to mark her spiritual loneliness with such poignant insistence; it made it so desperately plain to her that those sharp cravings of her heart could not be satisfied except by one man. It had made her see, for the first time, that the sacred dead, to whom she had raised a shrine, was a memory and not a present reality to her; and this thought only added to her confusion and her grief.
What was there to hold on to in life?
"O, put thy trust in God!" came the answer.
"Help me to make the mischance of my life a motive for greater moral effort. Help me to be a willing sacrifice and not an unwilling victim." And as she uttered these words she moved with more rapid steps.
Shadows were visible on the roadway; roofs glimmered and the edges of the deep window recesses were tinged with a dark silver. She passed under the walls of All Souls and emerged again into the High. A figure she recognised confronted her. She tried to pass it without appearing to be aware of it, and she hurried on with bent head. But it turned, and Bingham's voice spoke to her.
"Mrs. Dashwood," he called softly.
She was forced to slacken her pace. "Oh, Mr. Bingham!" she said, and he came and walked by her, making pretence that he was disturbing her solitude because he had never been told the dinner-hour at the Lodgings, when Lady Dashwood invited him, and, what was more important, he had forgotten to say that he would be very glad if Mrs. Dashwood would make use of him as a cicerone if she wanted any more sight-seeing in Oxford and the Warden was unable to accompany her. This was the pretence he put before her.
Then, when he had said all this and had walked a few yards along the street with her, he seemed to forget that his business with her ought to be over, and remarked that he had been trying to save Boreham's soul.
"His soul!" said May, with a sigh.
"I've been trying to make him work."
"Doesn't he work?" asked May.
"No, he preaches," said Bingham. "If he had a touch of genius he might invent some attractive system of ethics in which his own characteristics would be the right characteristics; some system in which humility and patience would take a back seat."
May could not help smiling a little, Bingham's voice was so smooth and soft; but she felt Boreham's loneliness again and ceased smiling.
"Or he might invent a new god," said Bingham, "a sort of composite photograph of himself and the old gods. He might invent a new creed to go along with it and damn all the old creeds. But he is incapable of construction, so he merely preaches the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is a soft job. Wherever he is, there is Sodom and Gomorrah! You see my point? Egotism is always annoyed at egotisms. An egotist always sees the egotism of other people. The egotism of those round him, jump at him, they get on his nerves! He has to love people who are far, far away! You see my point? Well, I've been trying to make him take on a small bit of war work!"
"And will he take it?" asked May.
"I don't know," said Bingham; "I've just left him, a prey to conflicting passions."
May was silent.
"Are you going back to King's?" asked Bingham.
She and Bingham were walking along, just as she and Boreham had been walking along the same street, past these same colleges not an hour ago. Was she going back to the Lodgings? Yes, she thought, in fact she knew she was going back to the Lodgings.
"May I see you to the Lodgings?" asked Bingham.
There seemed no alternative but to say "Yes."
"There are many things I should like to talk over with you, Mrs. Dashwood," said Bingham, stepping out cheerfully. "I should like to roam the universe with you."
"I'm afraid you would find me very ignorant," said May.
"I would present you with facts. I would sit at your feet and hold them out for your inspection, and you, from your throne above, would pronounce judgment on them."
"It is the ignorant people who always do pronounce judgment," said May. "So that will be all right. You spoke of Mr. Boreham preaching. Well, I've just been preaching. It's a horrid habit."
Bingham gave one of his surprising and most cultured explosions of laughter. May turned and looked at him with her eyebrows very much raised.
"I am laughing at myself," he explained. "I thought to buy things too cheaply."
May looked away, pondering on the meaning of his words. At last the meaning occurred to her.
"You mean you wanted to flatter me, and – and I began to talk about something else. Was that what made you laugh?" she asked.
"That's it," said Bingham. "I wanted to flatter you because it is a pleasure to flatter you, and I forgot what a privilege it was."
"Ah!" said May, quietly.
"Cheap, cheap, always cheap!" said Bingham. "Cheapness is the curse of our age. The old Radical belief in the right to buy cheaply, that poison has soaked into the very bone of politics. It has contaminated our religion. The pulpit has decided in favour of cheap salvation."
May looked round again at Bingham's moonlit profile.
"No more hell!" he said, "no more narrow way, no more strait gate to heaven! On the contrary, we bawl ourselves blue asserting that the way is broad, and that every blessed man Jack of us will find it. Yes," he went on more slowly, "we have no use now for a God who can deny to any one a cheap suburban residence in the New Jerusalem. And so," he added, "I flatter you, stupidly, and – and you forgive me."
They walked on together for a moment in silence.
"I don't deserve your forgiveness," he said. "But I desire your forgiveness. I desire your toleration as far as it will go. Perhaps, if you were to let me talk on, I might go too far for your toleration," and now he turned and looked at her.
"You would not go too far," said May. "You are too much detached; you look on – " and here she hesitated.
"Oh, damn!" said Bingham, softly; "that is the accursed truth," and he stared before him at the cracks in the pavement as they stood out sharply in the moonlight.
"You mustn't mind," said May, soothingly.
"I do mind," said Bingham; "I should like to be able to take my own emotions seriously. I should like to feel the importance of my being highly strung, imaginative, a lover of beauty and susceptible to the charms of women. Instead of which I am hopelessly critical of myself. I see myself a blinking fool, among other fools." Bingham's lips went on moving as if he were continuing to speak to himself.
"When a woman takes you and your emotions seriously, what happens then?" asked May very softly, and she looked at him with wide open eyes and her eyebrows full of inquiry.
"Ah!" sighed Bingham, "that was long ago. I have forgotten – or nearly." Then he added, after a moment's silence: "May I talk to you about the present?"
"Yes, do," said May.
"There!" said Bingham, resentfully, "see how you trust me! You know that if I begin to step on forbidden ground, you have only to put out your finger and say 'Stop!' and I shall retire amiably, with a jest."
"That is part of – of your – your charm," said May, hesitatingly.
"My charm!" repeated Bingham, in a tone of sarcasm.
"I'm sorry I used the word charm," said May. "I will use a better term, your personality. You are so alarming and yet so gentle."
Bingham turned and gazed at her silently. They were now very near the Lodgings.
"Thanks," he said at last. "I know where I am. But I knew it before."
A great silence came upon them. Sounds passed them as they walked; men hurried past them, occasionally a woman, a Red Cross nurse in uniform. The sky above was still growing more and more luminous. All the rest of the way they walked in silence, each thinking their own thoughts, neither wishing to speak. When they reached the Lodgings Bingham walked into the court with her.
"Won't you come in?" she asked, but it was a mere formality, for she knew that he would refuse.
"It's too late," he said.
"And you are coming to dinner to-morrow at eight?" She laid emphasis on the hour, to hide the fact that she was really asking whether he meant to come at all, after their talk about his personality.
"Yes, at eight," he said. "Good-bye."
As he spoke the moon showed full and gloriously, coming out for a moment sharply from the fine gauzy veil of grey that overspread the sky, and the Court was distinct to its very corners. The gravel, the shallow stone steps at the door, the narrow windows on each side of the door, the sombre walls; all were illumined. And Bingham's face, as he lifted his cap, was illumined too. It was a very dark face, so dark that May doubted if she really had quite grasped the details of it in her own mind. His eyes seemed scarcely to notice her as she smiled, and yet he too smiled. Then he went back over the gravel to the gate without saying another word. She did not look at his retreating figure. She opened the door and went in. Other people in the world were suffering. Why can't one always realise that? It would make one's own suffering easier to bear.
The house seemed empty. There was not a sound in it. The dim portraits on the walls looked out from their frames at her. But they had nothing to do with her, she was an outsider!
She walked up the broad staircase. She must endure torture for two – nearly three more days! The hours must be dealt with one by one, even the minutes. It would take all her strength.
At the head of the stairs she paused. Her desire was to go straight to her room, and not to go into the drawing-room and greet her Aunt Lena. Gwendolen would very likely be there in high spirits – the future mistress of the house – the one person in the world to whom the Warden would have to say, "May I? Can I?"
"Don't be a coward! Other people in the world are suffering besides you," said the inner voice; and May went straight to the drawing-room door and opened it.
The room was dark except for a glimmer from a red fire. May was going out again, and about to close the door, when her aunt's voice called to her, and the lights went up on each side of the fireplace. May pushed the door back again and came inside.
"Aunt Lena!" she called.
Lady Dashwood had been sitting on the couch near it. She was standing now. It was she who had put up the lights. Her face was pale and her eyes brilliant.
"May, it's all over!" she called under her breath.
May stood by the door. It was still ajar and in her hand.
"All over! What is all over?" she asked apprehensively.
"Shut the door!" said Lady Dashwood, in a low voice.
May shut the door.
"Gwendolen has broken off her engagement!" said Lady Dashwood, controlling her voice.
May always remembered that moment. The room seemed to stretch about her in alleys fringed with chairs and couches. There was plenty of room to walk, plenty of room to sit down. There was plenty of time too. It was extraordinary what a lot of time there was in the world, time for everything you wanted to do. Then there was the portrait over the mantelpiece. He seemed to have nothing to do. She had not thought of that before. He was absolutely idle, simply looking on. And below these trivial thoughts, tossed on the surface of her mind, flowed a strange, confused, almost overwhelming, tide of joy.
CHAPTER XXIV
A CAUSE AND IMPEDIMENT
"Oh!" was all that May said.
Lady Dashwood looked at her and looked again. She put out her hand and rested it on the mantelshelf, and still looked at May. May was taking off one of her gloves. When she had unfastened the buttons she discovered that she was wearing a watch on her wrist, and she wound it up carefully.
Lady Dashwood was still looking, all her excitement was suppressed for the moment. What was May thinking of – what had happened to her?
"For how long?" asked May, and she suddenly perceived that there had been a rigid silence between them.
"For how long?" exclaimed Lady Dashwood.
"Yes," said May.
"The engagement is broken off!" said Lady Dashwood. "Broken off, dear!"
"Not permanently?" said May, as if she were speaking of an incident of no particular importance.
Lady Dashwood's eyes gleamed. "For ever," she said.
May looked at her watch again and began to wind it up again. It refused to be wound any more. May looked at it anxiously.
"Gwendolen goes to-morrow," said Lady Dashwood. "It is she who has broken off the engagement, and she is going away before Jim returns. It is all over, May, and I have been waiting for half an hour to tell you the news. I have scarcely known how to wait."
May went up and kissed her silently.
"You are the only person I can speak to," said Lady Dashwood. "May, I feel as if this couldn't be true. Will you read this?" And she put a letter into May's hands. As she did so she saw, for the first time, that May's hands were trembling. She drew the letter back and said quietly: "No, let me read Marian Potten's letter to you. I want to read it again for my own sake, though I have read it half a dozen times already."
"Mrs. Potten!" said May. "Aunt Lena, you'll think me stupid, but I haven't grasped things."
"Of course not," said Lady Dashwood. "And I am too much excited to explain properly. I suppose my nerves have been strained lately. I want to hear Marian's letter read aloud. Listen, May! Oh, my dear, do listen!"
Lady Dashwood turned the letter up to the light and began to read in a slow, emphatic, husky voice —
"Dear Lena,
"Certain things have happened of which I cannot speak, and which necessitated a private interview between Gwendolen and myself. But what I am going to tell you now concerns you, because it concerns the Warden. In our interview Gwendolen confided to me that she had serious misgivings about the wisdom of her engagement. They are more than misgivings. She feels that she ought not to have accepted the Warden's offer. She feels that she never considered the responsibilities she was undertaking, and she had nobody to talk the matter over with who could have given her sensible advice. She feels that neither her character nor her education fit her to be a Warden's wife, and she shrinks from the duties that it involves. All this came out! I hope that you and the Warden will forgive the fact that all this came out before me, and that I found myself in the position of Gwen's adviser. She has come to the conclusion that she ought to break off this engagement – so hastily made – and I agree with her that there should not be an hour's delay in breaking it off. She is afraid of meeting the Warden and having to give him a personal explanation. It is a natural fear, for she is only a silly child and he is a man of years and experience. She does not feel strong enough to meet him and tell him to his face that she cannot be his wife. You will understand how unpleasant it would be for you all. So, with my entire approval and help, she has taken the opportunity of his absence to write him a decisive letter. She will hand you over this letter and ask you to give it to the Warden on his return home. This letter is to tell him that she releases him from his promise of marriage. And to avoid a very serious embarrassment I have invited her to come to Potten End to-morrow morning and stay with me till I have heard from Lady Belinda. I am writing myself to Lady Belinda, giving her full details. I am sure she will be convinced of the wisdom of Gwendolen so suddenly breaking off her engagement. I will send the car for Gwendolen to-morrow at ten o'clock, and meanwhile will you spare her feelings and make no reference to what has taken place? The poor child is feeling very sore and very much ashamed of all the fuss, but feels that she is doing the right thing – at last.
"Yours ever,"Marian Potten."
Lady Dashwood folded up the letter and put it back into its envelope. She avoided looking at May just now.
"Marian must feel very strongly on the subject to offer to send her own car," she said. "I have never known her do such a thing before," and Lady Dashwood smiled and looked at the fire. "So the whole thing is over! But how did it all come about? What happened? I've been thinking over every possible accident that could have happened to make Gwen change her mind in this sudden way, and I am still in the dark," she went on. "Do you think that Gwendolen had any misgivings about her engagement when she left this house after lunch, May? I'm sure she hadn't." Here Lady Dashwood paused and looked towards May but not at her. "It all happened at Potten End! I'm certain of it," she added.
May, having at last completely drawn off both her gloves, was folding and unfolding them with unsteady hands.
"It's a mystery," said May.
"But I don't care what happened!" said Lady Dashwood, solemnly; "I don't really want to know. It is over! I can't rest, I can't read, I can't think coherently. I can only be thankful – thankful beyond words."
May walked slowly in the direction of the door. "Yes, all your troubles are over," she said.
"Do you remember, May," went on Lady Dashwood, "how you and I stood together just here, under the portrait, when you arrived on Monday? Well, all that torment is over. All that happened between then and now has been wiped clean out, as if it had never been."
But all had not been wiped out. Some of what happened had been written down in May's mind and couldn't be wiped out.
"Don't go this moment; sit down for a little, before you go and dress," said Lady Dashwood, "and I'll try and sit, for I must talk, I must talk, and, May dear, you must listen. Come back, dear!"
Lady Dashwood sat down on one side of the fireplace and looked at May, as she came back and seated herself on the opposite side. There was the fireplace between them.
"Aren't you glad?" asked Lady Dashwood. "Aren't you glad, May?"
"I am very glad," said May. "I rejoice – in your joy."
Lady Dashwood leaned back in her chair, and let her eyes rest on May's face.
"I can't describe to you what I felt when Gwendolen came in half an hour ago. She came in quietly, her face pale and her eyes swollen, and said quite abruptly: 'I have broken on my engagement with Dr. Middleton. Please don't scold me, please don't talk about it; please let me go. I'm miserable enough as it is,' and she put two letters into my hand and went. May, I took the letter addressed to Jim and locked it up, for a horrible fear came on me that some one might destroy that letter. Besides, I had also the fear that because the thing was so sudden it might somehow not be true. Well, then I came down here again and waited for you. I waited in the dark, trying to rest. You came in very late. I scarcely knew how to wait. I suppose I am horribly excited. I am feeling now as Louise feels constantly, but I can't get any relief in the way she does. A Frenchwoman never bottles up anything; her method is to wear other people out and save her own strength by doing so. From our cradles we are smacked if we express our emotions; but foreigners have been encouraged to express their emotions. They believe it necessary and proper to do so. They gesticulate and scream. It is a confirmed habit with them to do so, and it doesn't mean much. I dare say when you or I just say 'Oh!' it means more than if Louise uttered persistent shrieks for half an hour. But she is a good soul – " And Lady Dashwood ran on in this half-consequent, half-inconsequent way, while May sat in her chair, busy trying to hide the trembling of her knees. They would tremble. She tried holding them with her hands, but they refused to stop shaking. Once they trembled too obviously, and Lady Dashwood said, in a changed tone, as if she had suddenly observed May: "You have caught cold! You have caught a chill!"
"Perhaps I have," said May, and her knees knocked against each other.
"You have, my dear," said Lady Dashwood; and as she pronounced this verdict, she rose from her chair with great suddenness. There was on her face no anxiety, not a trace of it, but a certain great content. But as she rose she became aware that her head ached and she felt a little dizzy. What matter!
"I may have got just the slightest chill," said May, rising too, "but if so, it's nothing!"
"Most people like having chills, and that's why they never take any precautions, and refuse all remedies," said Lady Dashwood, making her way to the door with care, and speaking more slowly and deliberately; "but I know you're not like that, and I'm going to give you an infallible cure and preventive. It'll put you right, I promise. Come along, dear child. I ought to have known you had a chill. I ought to have seen it written on your brow 'Chill' when you came in; but I've been too much excited by events to see anything. I've been chattering like a silly goose. Come upstairs, I'm going to dose you."
And May submitted, and the two women went out of the drawing-room together up the two or three steps and into the corridor. They walked together, both making a harmless, pathetic pretence: the one to think the other had a chill, the other to own that a chill it was, indeed, though not a bad chill!
What was Gwendolen doing now? Was she crying? "Poor thing, poor little neglected thing!" thought Lady Dashwood.
"Marian can be very high-handed," she whispered to May. "I have known her do many arbitrary things. She would be quite capable of – But what's the good! Poor Gwen! I couldn't pity her before, I felt too hard. But now Jim is safe I can think reasonably. I'm sorry for her. But," she added, "I'm not sorry for Belinda."
Now that they had reached May's room, May declared that she was not as sure as she had been that she had got a chill.
But the chill could not be dropped like that. Lady Dashwood felt the impropriety of suddenly giving up the chill, and she left the room and went to search for the infallible cure and preventive. As she did so she began to wonder why she could not will to have no headache. She was so happy that a headache was ridiculous.
When she returned, May was in her dressing-gown and was moving about with decision, and her limbs no longer trembled.
"I don't pity Belinda," said Lady Dashwood, pretending not to see the change. "I don't pity her, though I suppose that she, too, is merely a symptom of the times we live in." Here she began to pour out a dose from the bottle in her hand. "It can't be a good thing, May, for the community that there should be women who live to organise amusement for themselves; who merely live to meet each other and their men folk, and play about. It can't be good for the community? We ought all to work, May, every one of us. Writing invitations to each other to come and play, buying things for ourselves, seeing dressmakers isn't work. There, May!" She held out the glass to May. Each kept up the pretence – pretending with solemnity that May had been trembling because she had possibly got a chill. It was a pretence that was necessary. It was a pretence that covered and protected both of them. It was a brave pretence. "No," said Lady Dashwood again, and firmly, as she released the glass. "It isn't good for the community to have a class of busy idlers at the top of the ladder."
May had taken the glass, and now she tipped it up and drank the contents. They were hot and stinging!
Then May broke her silence, and imitating a voice that Lady Dashwood knew well, uttered these words:
"Oh, damn the community!"
"Was it very nasty?" said Lady Dashwood, laughing. "Ah, May, I can laugh now at Belinda! Alas! I can laugh!"
