Kitabı oku: «The New Warden», sayfa 18

CHAPTER XXVIII
ALMA MATER

The Warden went to the door and turned the key. Why, he did not know. He simply did it instinctively. Then he finished reading the letter; and having read it through, read it again a second time. He was a free man, and he had obtained his freedom through a circumstance that was pitifully silly, a circumstance almost incredibly sordid and futile.

Her humiliation was his humiliation, for had he not chosen her to be his companion for life? Had he not at this time, when the full responsibility of manhood was placed on every man, had he not chosen as the mother of his children, a moral weakling?

He locked the letter up in his desk and paced the length of the room once or twice. Then he threw himself into a chair and, clasping his head in his hands, remained there motionless. Could he be the same man who had a few days ago, of his own free will, without any compulsion, without any kind of necessity, offered himself for life to a girl of whom he knew absolutely nothing, except that she had had a miserable upbringing and an heredity that he could not respect? Was it her slender beauty, her girlishness, that had made him so passionately pitiful?

From an ordinary man this action would have been folly, but from him it was an offence! A very great offence, now, in these times. On the desk lay some pages of notes – notes of a course of public lectures he was about to give, lectures on the responsibility of citizenship, in which he was going to make a strong appeal to his audience for a more conscious philosophy of life. He was going to urge the necessity for greater reverence for education. He was going to speak not only of the burden of Empire, but of the new burden, the burden of Democracy, a Democracy that is young, independent, and feeling its way. He was going to speak of the true meaning of a free Democracy, no chaotic meaningless freedom, but the sane and ordered freedom of educated men, Democracy open-eyed and training itself, like a strong man, to run a race for some far-off, some desired goal to which "all creation moves."

He was in these lectures going to pose not only as a practical man but as a preacher, one of those who "point the way"; and meanwhile he had bound himself to a girl who not only would be unable to grasp the meaning of any strenuous moral effort, but who would have to be herself guarded from every petty temptation that came in her way. He was (so he said to himself, as he groaned in his spirit) one of those many preachers who, in all ages, have talked of moral progress, and who have missed the road that they themselves have pointed out!

He was fiercely angry with himself because he had called the emotion that he had felt for Gwendolen in her mischance a "passionate pity." It was a very different emotion from that which wrung him when his old pupils, one by one, gave up their youth and hope in the service of their country. That indeed was a passionate pity, a pity full of remorseful gratitude, full of great pride in their high purpose and their noble self-sacrifice. On his mantelpiece, within arm's length of him, lay an open book. It was a book of poems, and there were verses that the Warden had read more than once.

"City of hope and golden dreaming."

A farewell to Oxford. It was the farewell of youth in its heyday to

"All the things we hoped to do."

And then followed the lines that pierced him now with poignant sadness as he thought of them —

"Dreams that will never be clothed in being,

Mother, your sons have left with you."

The Warden groaned within himself. He was part of that Alma Mater; that city left behind in charge of that sacred gift!

He loathed himself, and this deep self-humiliation of a scrupulous gentleman was what his sister had shrunk from witnessing. It was this deep humiliation that May Dashwood fled from when she hid herself in her room that afternoon.

The Warden was not a man who spent much time in introspection. He had no subtlety of self-analysis, but what insight he had was spent in condemning himself, not in justifying himself. But now he added this to his self-accusations, that if May Dashwood had not suddenly stepped across his path and revealed to him true womanhood, gilded – yes, he used that term sardonically – gilded by beauty, he might not have seen the whole depth of his offence until now, when the crude truth about Gwendolen was forced upon him by her letter.

The Warden sat on, crushed by the weight of his humiliation. And he had been forgiven, he had been rescued from his own folly. His mistake had been wiped out, his offence pardoned.

And what about Gwendolen herself? What about this poor solitary foolish girl? What was to be her future? Swiftly she had come into his life and swiftly gone! What, indeed, was to become of her and her life?

And so the Warden sat on till the dressing-bell rang, and then he got up from his chair blindly.

He had been forgiven and rescued too easily. He did not deserve it. How was it that he had dared to quote to May Dashwood those solemn, awful words —

"And the glory of the Lord is all in all!"

It must have seemed to her a piece of arrogant self-righteousness.

And she had said: "What is the glory of the Lord?" and had answered the question herself. Her answer had condemned him; the glory of the Lord was not merely self-restraint, stoical resignation, it was something more, it was "Love" that "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."

"For he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

The Warden dressed, moving about automatically, not thinking of what he was doing. When he left his bedroom he passed the head of the staircase. There were letters lying on the table, just as letters had lain waiting for him on that evening, on that Monday evening, when he found Gwendolen reading the letter from her mother and crying over it. Within those few short days he had risked the happiness and the usefulness of his whole life, and – God had forgiven him.

He passed the table and went on. Lena must have been waiting for him, expecting him! Perhaps she had been worrying. The thought made him walk rapidly along the corridor.

He knocked at her door. Louise opened it.

"Entrez, Monsieur," she said, in the tone and manner of one who mounts guard and whose permission must be obtained.

She stood aside to let him pass, and then went out and pulled the door to after her.

The Warden walked up to the bed.

Lady Dashwood's face was averted from him. "Jim," she said wistfully, and she put her hand over her eyes and waited for the sound of his voice.

She was there, waiting for him to show her what sort of sympathy he needed. He did not speak. He came round to the side of the bed where she was lying, by the windows. There he stood for a moment looking down upon her. She did not look up. She looked, indeed, like a culprit, like one humbled, who longed for pardon but did not like to ask for it. And it was this profound humble sympathy that smote his heart through and through. What if anything had happened to this dear sister of his? What if her unhappiness had been too great a strain upon her?

He knelt down by the bed and laid his face on her shoulder, just as he used to do when he was a child. Neither of them spoke. She moved her hand and clasped his arm that he placed over her, and they remained like this for some minutes, while a great peace enclosed them. In those few minutes it seemed as if years dropped away from them and they were young again. She the motherly young woman, and he the motherless boy to whom she stood as mother. All the interval was forgotten and there they were still, mother and son.

When at last he raised himself he found that her eyes were dim with tears. As to himself, he felt strangely quieted and composed. He pulled a chair to the bedside and sat down, not facing her, but sideways, and he rested his elbow on the edge of her pillow his other hand resting on hers.

"Did you get through all you wanted to, in Town?" she asked, smiling through her tears.

"Lena!" he said in a low voice, "you want to spare me. You always do."

His voice overwhelmed her. His humility pierced her like a sword.

"It was all my fault, dear," she began; "entirely my fault."

"No," he said, in a low emphatic voice.

"It was." She reiterated this with almost a sullen persistence.

"How could it possibly be your fault?" he said, with deep self-reproach.

"It was," she said, "though I cannot make you understand it. Jim, you must forget it all, for my sake. You must forget it at once, you have things to do."

"I have things to do," he said. "I seemed in danger of forgetting those things," he said huskily. "As to forgetting, that is a difficult matter."

"You must put it aside," she said, and now she raised herself on her pillows and stared anxiously into his face. "You made a mistake such as the best man would make," she argued passionately. "How can a strong man suspect weakness in others? You know how it is, we suspect in others virtues and vices that we have ourselves. You know what I mean, dear. A drunkard always suspects other men of wanting to drink!" and she laughed a little, and her voice trembled with an excitement she found it difficult to suppress. "Thieves always suspect others of thieving. An amorous man sees sex motives in everything. Do you suppose an honourable man doesn't also suspect others of honourable intentions?"

He made no reply.

"Besides, you have always been eager to think the best of women. You've credited them, even with mental gifts that they haven't got! You have been over-loyal to them all your life! And now" – here Lady Dashwood put out her hand and laid it on his arm as if to compel him to agree – "and now you are suffering for it, or rather you have suffered. You thought you were doing your duty, that you ought to marry. You were right; you ought to marry, and I, just at that moment, thrust somebody forward who looked innocent and helpless. And how could you tell? Of course you couldn't tell," and now her voice dropped a little and she seemed suddenly to have become tired out, and she sank back on her pillows.

The Warden leant over her. Her special pleading for him was so familiar to him. She had corrected his faults, admonished him when necessary, but had always upheld his self-respect, even in small matters. She was fighting now for the preservation of his sense of honour.

"Anyhow, darling," she said, "you must forget!"

"You are exhausted," he said, "in trying to make black white. I ought not to have come in and let you talk. Lena, what has happened this week has knocked you up. I know it, and even now you are worrying because of me. I will forget it, dear, if you will pick up again and get strong."

"I am better already," she said, and the very faintest smile was on her face. "I am rather tired, but I shall be all right to-morrow. All I want is a good night's sleep. I want to sleep for hours, and I shall sleep for hours now that I have seen you."

A knock came on the door.

"They are looking for you, dear," said Lady Dashwood.

The Warden slowly rose from his seat. "I must go now, Lena," he said, "but I shall come in again the last thing. I shall come in without knocking if I may, because I hope you will be asleep, and I don't want to wake you."

"Very well," she said smiling. "You'll find me asleep. I feel so calm, so happy."

He bent down and kissed her and then went to the door. She turned her head and looked after him. Louise was at the door.

"Monsieur Bingham is arrived," she said; "I regret to have disturbed Monsieur."

The Warden walked slowly down the corridor. There was something that he dreaded, something that was going to happen – the first meeting of the eyes – the first moment when May Dashwood would look at him, knowing all that had happened!

He passed the table again on which lay his letters. He would look through all that pile of correspondence after Bingham had gone.

Robinson was hovering at the stairhead. "Mr. Bingham is in the drawing-room, sir."

"Alone?" asked the Warden.

"Mrs. Dashwood is there, sir," said Robinson.

"How have you arranged the table?" asked the Warden.

"I've put Mrs. Dashwood close on your right, sir," said Robinson, secretly amazed at the question; "Mr. Bingham on your left, sir."

"Yes," said the Warden. "Yes, of course!" passing his servant with an abstracted air.

"Shall I announce dinner, sir?" asked Robinson, hurrying behind and measuring his strength for what he was about to perform in the exercise of his duty.

"Yes," said the Warden, still moving on, and now near the drawing-room door.

Robinson made a wondrous skip, a miracle it was of service in honour of the Warden; he flew past his master like an aged but agile Mercury and pounced upon the drawing-room door handle. Then he threw the door open. He waited till the Warden had advanced to a sufficient distance in the room towards the guests who were waiting by the fireside, and then he uttered, in his penetrating but quavering voice, the familiar and important word —

"Dinner!"

CHAPTER XXIX
DINNER

"I am sorry I'm late," said the Warden quietly, and he looked at both his guests. "I have been with Lady Dashwood. I must apologise, Bingham, for her absence. I expect Mrs. Dashwood has already told you that she is not well."

The bow with which the Warden offered his arm to May was one which included more than the mere formal invitation to go down to dinner, it meant a greeting after absence and an acknowledgment that she was acting as his hostess. It was one of those ceremonial bows which men are rarely able to make without looking pompous. He had the reputation, in Oxford, of being one of the very few men who, in his tutorial days, could present men for degrees with academic grace.

"I'm sorry, Bingham," he said; "I have only just returned, or I might have secured a fourth to dinner – yes, even in war time."

May went downstairs, wondering. Wondering how it was that the worst was so soon over, and that, after all, instead of feeling a painful pity for the man whose arm held hers in a light grasp, she felt strangely timorous of him.

She was profoundly thankful for the presence of Bingham, who was following behind, cheerful and chatty, having put aside, apparently, all recollection of the conversation of the evening before. Yes, whatever his secret thoughts might have been, Bingham appeared to have forgotten that there were any moonlight nights in the streets of Oxford. For this, May blessed him.

They entered the long dining-room and, sitting at the Warden's end of the table, formed a bright living space of light and movement. Outside that bright space the room gradually sombred to the dark panelled walls. The Warden, in his high-backed chair, looked the very impersonation of Oxford. This was what struck Bingham as he glanced at his host, and the thought suggested that hater of Oxford, the Warden's relative, Bernard Boreham.

"I have just got your friend Boreham to undertake a job of work," said Bingham. "It'll do him a world of good to have work, a library to catalogue for the use of our prisoners. He wanted to shove off the job to some chaplain. I was to procure the chaplain, just as if all men weren't scarce, even chaplains!"

Composed as the Warden was, he looked at Bingham with something of eager attention on his face, as if relying on him for support and conversation.

"Poor old Boreham, he is a connection of mine by marriage," he said, and as the words fell from his lips, he, in his present sensitive mood, recoiled from them, for they implied that Boreham was not a friend. Why was he posing as one who was too superior to choose Boreham as a friend?

"Talking of chaplains," said Bingham, who knew nothing of what was going on in the Warden's mind, and thought this sudden stop came from dislike of any reference to Boreham – "talking of parsons, why not release all parsons in West End churches for the war?"

A smile came into May's face at the extreme sweetness of Bingham's voice; a warning that he was about to say something biting.

"Release all parsons who have smart congregations," continued Bingham, in honied tones; "parsons with congregations of jolly, well-dressed women, women who enjoy having their naughtiness slanged from the pulpit just as they enjoy having their photographs in the picture papers. Their spiritual necessities would be more than adequately provided for if they were given a dummy priest and a gramophone."

May's smile seemed to stimulate Bingham's imagination.

"To waste on them a real parson with a soul and a rudimentary intellect," he went on, "is like giving a glass of Moselle to an agricultural labourer when he would be happy with a mug of beer. But the Church wastes its energies even in this time of heartbreakings."

"I should like to see you, Bingham," said the Warden, smiling too, and turning his narrow eyes, in his slow deliberate manner, towards his guest, "as chairman to a committee of English bishops, on the Reconstruction of the Church."

"I've no quarrel with our bishops," said Bingham; "I don't want them to extol every new point of view as they pass along. I don't expect them to behave like young men. Nor do I expect them to be like the Absolute, without 'body, parts or passions.' My indictment is not even against that mere drop in the ocean, 'good Christian souls,' but against humanity and human nature!" Bingham looked from one to the other of his listeners. "Until now, the only people we have taken quite seriously are the very well dressed and the – well, the undressed. The two classes overlap continually. But now we've got to take everybody seriously; we are going to have a Democracy. Human nature has got a new tool, and the tool is Democracy. The new tool is to be put into the same foolish old hands, and we shall very soon discover what we shall call 'the sins of Democracy.' What is fundamentally wrong with us is what apparently we can't help: it's that we are ourselves, that we are human beings." Bingham smiled into his plate. "We adopt Christianity, and because we are human beings we make it intellectually rigid and morally sloppy. We are patronising Democracy, and we shall make it intellectually rigid and morally sloppy too – if we don't take care. Everything we handle becomes intellectually rigid and morally sloppy. And yet we still fancy that, if only we could get hold of the right tools, our hands would do the right work."

"The Reconstruction of Human Nature is what you are demanding," said the Warden.

"Yes, that's what we want," sighed Bingham. "When we have got rid of the Huns, we must begin to think about it."

"If you saw the children I have seen, Mr. Bingham," said May, quietly, "you would want to begin at once, and I think you would be hopeful."

There was on the Warden's face a sudden passionate assent that Bingham detected.

"All men," said Bingham, leaning back in his chair and regarding his two listeners with veiled attention – "all men like to hear a woman say sweet, tender, hopeful things, even if they don't believe them. As for myself, Mrs. Dashwood, I admit that your 'higher optimism' haunts me too at times; at rare times when, for instance, the weather in Oxford is dry and bright and bracing."

If he had for a moment doubted it since the afternoon at the Hardings', Bingham was now sure, as sure as a man can be of what is unconfessed in words, that between this man and woman sitting at the table with him was some secret sensitive interest that was not friendship.

How did this conviction affect Bingham and Bingham's spirits? It certainly did not put a stop to his flow of talk. Rather, he talked the more; he was even more sweetly cynical and amiably scintillating than usual. If his heart was wounded, and he himself was not sure whether it was or not, he hid that heart successfully in a sheath of his own sparks.

A pause came when Robinson put out the light over the carving-table and withdrew with Robinson Junior. The dining-room was silent. Bingham drank some wine, the Warden mused, and May Dashwood sat with her eyes on a glass of water by her, looking at it as if she could see some vision in its transparency. The fire was glowing a deep red in the great stone chimney-piece at the further end of the room. A coal fell forward upon the hearth with a strangely solitary sound. Bingham glanced towards the fire and then round the room, and then at his host, and lastly at May Dashwood.

"I heard a rumour," he said, and he took a sip of his claret, "that your college ghost had made an appearance!"

There came another silence in the room.

"One doesn't know how such rumours come about," continued Bingham; "perhaps you hadn't even heard of this one?" He looked across at May and round at the Warden. Neither of them seemed to be aware that a question was being asked.

"I didn't know King's even claimed a ghost," said Bingham again. "I've heard of the ghost of Shelley in the High," he added, smiling. "A ghost for the tourist who comes to see the Shelley Memorial."

May looked down rather closely at the table.

The Warden moved stiffly. "I don't believe Shelley would want to come," he said. "He always despised his Alma Mater."

"He was a bit of an enfant terrible," said Bingham, "from the tutor's point of view."

May raised her eyes with relief; the Warden had parried the question of the ghost with skill.

"And I don't believe," said the Warden, "that any one returns who has merely roystered within our walls," and he smiled.

Bingham was now looking very attentively at the Warden out of his dark eyes.

"Jeremy Bentham," he said, "seems to have been afraid of ghosts, when he was an undergraduate here. He was afraid of barging against them on dark college staircases. It's a fear I can't grasp. I would much rather come into collision with any ghost than with the Stroke of the 'Varsity Eight, whether the staircase was dark or not."

"If there are ghosts," said the Warden, pensively, "I should expect to see Cranmer, on some wild night, wandering near the places where he endured his passion and his death. Or I should expect to see Laud pacing the streets, amazed at the order and discipline of modern Oxford. If personal attachment could bring a man from the grave," he went on, meeting Bingham's eyes with a smile, "why shouldn't that least ghostly of all scholars, your old master, Jowett – why shouldn't he walk at night when Balliol is asleep?"

"Then there was nothing in the rumour," said Bingham, "that your King's ghost has turned up?"

"The Warden doesn't believe in ghosts," said May, looking across the table eagerly. She remembered how he had stood by the bedside of Gwendolen that night. She recalled the room vividly, the gloom of the room and he alone standing in the light thrown upon him by the lamp. She could recall every tone of his voice as he said: "You thought you saw something. You made a mistake. You saw nothing, you imagined that you saw – there was nothing," and how his voice convinced her, as she stood by the fire and listened. How long ago was that – only three days – it seemed like a month.

"No," said the Warden, "I don't believe in ghosts. At least, I don't believe that our dead" – and he pronounced the last word reverently – "are such that they can return to us in human form, or through the intervention of some hired medium. But if there are ghosts in Oxford," he went on, and now he turned to Bingham, as if he were answering his question – "if there are ghosts in Oxford they will be the ghosts of those who were, in life, bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. I am thinking of those men who lived and died in Oxford, recluses who knew no other world, and of whom the world knew nothing – men who used to flit like shadows from their solitary rooms to the Lecture hall and to High table and to the Common room. Those men were monks in all but name; celibates, solitaries – men to whom the laughter of youth was maddening pain."

May's eyes dropped! What the Warden was saying stabbed her, not merely because of the words he said, but because his voice conveyed the sense of that poignant pain.

"Such men as I speak of," he went on, "Oxford must always have possessed, even in the boisterous days when you fellows of All Souls," he said, addressing Bingham, "used to pull your doors off their hinges to make bonfires in honour of the mallard. There always have been these men, students shy and sensitive, shrinking from the rougher side of the ordinary man, shrinking from ordinary social life; men who are only courageous in their devotion to learning and to truth; men who are lonely with that awful loneliness of those who live in the world of thoughts. I knew one such man myself. Those who believe in ghosts may come upon the shades of these men in the passages and in the cloisters at night, or hiding in the dark recesses of our college windows. Why, I can feel them everywhere – and yet I don't believe in ghosts." The Warden placed his elbows upon the table and rested his chin upon his hands, and looked down at the table-cloth.

May said nothing; she was listening, her face bent but expressive even to her eyebrows.

"Neither do I," said Bingham, in an altered voice. "I don't believe in ghosts, and yet, what do we know of this world? We talk of it glibly. But what do we know of the forces which make up the phantasmagoria that we call the World? What do we know of this vast universe? We perceive something of it by touch, by sight, sound and smell. These are the doors through which its forces penetrate the brain of man. These doors are our way of 'being aware' of life. The psychology of man is in its infancy. And remember" – here Bingham leaned over the table and rested his eyes on May – "it is man studying himself! That makes the difficulty!" Bingham was serious now, and he had slipped from slang into the academic form in which his thoughts really moved.

"And we don't even know whether our ways of perceiving are the only ways," said the Warden.

"Anyhow," said Bingham, turning to him, "the ghosts you 'feel,' and which you and I don't believe in, belong to the old Oxford, the Oxford which is gone."

There came a sudden silence in the long room, and May felt that she ought to make a move. She looked at the Warden.

"That Oxford," continued Bingham, "is gone for ever. It began to go when men hedged it round with red brick, and went to live under red-tiled roofs with wives and children."

"Yes, it has gone," said the Warden. "Must you leave us!" he asked, rising, as May looked at him and made a movement to rise.

Bingham rose to his feet, but he stood with his hand holding the foot of his glass and gazing into its crimson depths.

"Pardon, Middleton! Mrs. Dashwood, one moment," he said, and he raised his glass solemnly till it was almost on a level with his dark face. "Will you pledge me?" he asked. "To the old Oxford that is past and gone!"

The Warden and May were both drinking water. They raised their glasses and touched Bingham's wine which glowed in the light from above, almost suggesting something sacramental. And Bingham himself looked like a smooth, swarthy priest of mediæval story, half-serious and half-gay, disguised in modern dress.

"To the Oxford of sacred memory," he said.

They drank.

May was thinking deeply and as she was about to place her glass back upon the table, the thought that was struggling for expression came to her. She lifted her glass: "To the Oxford that is to be," she said gently. She glanced first at Bingham, and then her eyes rested for a moment upon the Warden.

Bingham watched her keenly. He could see that at that moment she had no thought of herself. Her thoughts were of Oxford alone, and, Bingham guessed, with the man with whom she identified Oxford.

Bingham hesitated to raise his glass. Was it a flash of jealousy that went through him? A jealousy of the new Oxford and all that it might mean to the two human beings beside him? If it was jealousy it died out as swiftly as it had come.

He raised his glass.

"To the Oxford of the Future," said the Warden.

"Ad multos annos," said Bingham.