Kitabı oku: «The New Warden», sayfa 17

May put down her pen. "What is the matter, Louise?"

Louise drew in her breath. "My lady suffers," she began, and as she proceeded her words flowed more and more quickly: "while Madame prepares to forsake her, my lady faints upon the floor in the breakfast parlour, she expires."

May rose, her heart beating.

"She now swallows a glass of brandy and a biscuit brought by Mrs. Robinson, who is so slow, so slow and who understands nothing, but has the keys. I call and I call, eh bien, I call – oh, but what slowness, what insupportable delay."

May put her letter inside the writing case and moved away from the writing-table. She was composed now.

"Is she very ill?" she asked quietly.

"My lady has died every day for two weeks," continued Louise; "for many days she has died, and no one observes it but myself and the angels in heaven. Madame agonises, over what terrible events I know not. But they know, the spirits of the dead – they know and they come. I believe that, for this house, this Lodgings is gloomy, this Oxford is so full of sombre thought. My Lady Dashwood martyrs herself for others. I see it always with Monsieur le General Sir John Dashwood, excellent man as he is, but who insists on catching severe colds in the head – colds heavy, overpowering – he sneezing with a ferocity that is impossible. At last old Robinson telephones for a doctor at my demand, oh, how I demand! It was necessary to overcome the phlegm and the stupidity of the Robinson family. I say! I demand! It is only when Mrs. Robinson comes to assist at this terrible crisis, that I go to rush upstairs for Madame. I go to rush, but I am detained! 'Stay!' cries my lady, 'I forbid you to speak of it. I am not ill – it is an indisposition of the mildest.' You see, Madame, the extraordinary generosity of my Lady Dashwood! Her soul full of sublime resignation! 'I go to prevent Madame Mrs. Dashwood's departure,' I cry! My lady replies with immense self-renunciation, like that of the blessed saints: 'Say nothing, my poor Louise. I exist only to do good on this earth. I ask for nothing for myself. I suffer alone. I endure without complaint. I speak not of my extreme agony in the head. I do not mention the insupportable nausea of the stomach. I subdue my cries! I weep silently, alone in the presence of my God.'"

Louise paused for a second for breath.

Nothing at this moment could have made May smile. She looked at Louise with gravity.

"But," continued Louise, with the same vehement swiftness, "a good moment arrives. The form too full of Mrs. Robinson hides me as I escape from the room. I come to Madame here. Eh bien!" Here Louise broke off and, glancing round the room, made a gesture that implied unpacking May's luggage and putting everything back in the proper place. "I unpack for Madame, immediately, while Madame descends and assures my lady that she does not forsake her at the supreme moment."

Louise's eyes now seemed to pierce the space in front of her, she defied contradiction.

"I will go and see Lady Dashwood," said May, calmly. "But don't unpack yet for me. I shall put her ladyship to bed, Louise. Go and see that everything is ready, please."

"I go to countermand Madame's taxi," said Louise, astutely.

"You can do that," said May; "I shall wait till the doctor comes – anyhow. Ask Robinson to telephone at once."

May went down to the breakfast-room, and found Mrs. Robinson's stout form coming out of the door. Within Lady Dashwood was seated in a chair by the fire.

"I am perfectly well, May," said Lady Dashwood, lifting up a white face to her niece as she came up to her. "I have sent Mrs. Robinson away. That silly old fool, Louise, has made Robinson telephone for a doctor."

"Quite right of her," said May, quietly, "and I shall stop till he has come and gone."

"You didn't mean to go before lunch?" murmured Lady Dashwood.

"I can go after lunch," said May.

Lady Dashwood leaned her head back in a weak manner.

"Not so convenient to you perhaps, dear," she murmured, but in a voice that accepted the delay to May's departure. She accepted it and sighed and stared into the fire, and said not one word about the Warden, but she said: "I'm not going to bed. The house will be empty enough as it is;" and May knew she was thinking of the Warden's return.

"You must go to bed," May replied.

"I can't go to bed, child. I shall stay up and look after things," said Lady Dashwood, and she knew she was speaking with guile. "You forget, dear, that – the house will be so empty!"

"I shall put you to bed," said May.

"How do you know I shall remain?" said Lady Dashwood. "The doctor will say that there is nothing wrong." She looked white and obstinate and clung to her chair.

Then at last May said: "I am going to stay on till the doctor comes. Like all managing people, you are absolutely irresponsible about yourself, Aunt Lena. I shall have to stay and make you obey me."

"Oh, I didn't know I was so wicked!" sighed Lady Dashwood, in a suddenly contented voice. Now she allowed herself to be helped out of her chair and led upstairs to her room. "And can you really stay, May? Really, dear?"

"I must," said May. "You are so wicked."

"Oh dear, am I wicked?" said Lady Dashwood. "I knew my dear old John was very tiresome, but I didn't know I was!"

So May remained. What else could she do? She left Lady Dashwood in Louise's hands and went to her room. What was to be done about Mr. Bingham? May looked round the room.

Her boxes had disappeared. Her clothes were all put away and the toilet table carefully strewn with her toilet things. Louise had done it. On the little table by the bed stood something that had not been there before. It was a little plaster image of St. Joseph. It bore the traces of wear and tear from the hands of the pious believer – also deterioration from dust, and damage from accidents. Something, perhaps coffee, had been spilt upon it. The machine-made features of the face also had shared this accidental ablution, and one foot was slightly damaged. The saint was standing upon a piece of folded paper. May pulled out the paper and unfolded it. Written in faultless copper-plate were the words: "Louise Dumont prays for the protection of Madame every day."

CHAPTER XXVII
THE FORGIVENESS OF THE FATES

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 his voice 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 a high 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 of remorse, 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't fuss 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 was her door, 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 the Times yesterday and this morning very hastily. Gwendolen's mother 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, considerably disappointed 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 showed incapacity 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 – "

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!"