The New Warden

When they had gone, the Warden stood for some moments in the library pondering. He had shut the door. The curtains he had forgotten to pull back, and now he discovered his omission and went to the farther end of the room.

The opposite wall, the wall of the court, was just tipped with silver. Distant spires and gables were silver grey. The clouds were drifting over the city westwards, and as the moon rode higher and higher in the southern sky, so the clouds sped faster before it, and behind it lay clear unfathomable spaces in the east.

The Warden pulled the heavy curtain across the window again, and walked to the fireplace. Outside was the infinite universe – its immensity awful to contemplate! Inside was the narrow security of the lighted room in which he worked and thought and would work and think – for a few years!

For a few years?

How did he know that he should have even a few years in which to think and work for his College?

The Warden went to the fire and stood looking down into it, his hands clasped behind his back.

The girl he was pledged to marry, if she wished to marry him, might wreck his life! She had only just a few moments ago showed signs of being weakly hysterical. "Helpful to the College!" His sister's question had filled him with a sudden new ominous thought.

What about the College? He had forgotten his duty to the College!

"My marriage is my own concern," he was blurting out to himself miserably, as he looked at the fire. But the inevitable answer was already drumming in his ears – his own answer: "A man's action is not his own concern, and so deeply is every man involved in the life of the community in which he lives, that even his thoughts are not his own concern."

The Warden paced up and down.

There were letters lying on his desk unopened, unread. He would not attempt to answer any of them to-night. He could not attend to them, while these words were beating in his brain: "Do you think she will be helpful to the College?"

His College! More to him than anything else, more than his duty; his hope, his pride! And the College meant also the sacred memory of those who had fallen in the war, all the glorious hopeful youth that had sacrificed itself! And he had forgotten the College!

He dared not think any longer. He must wrestle with his thoughts. He must force them aside and wait, till the moment came when he must act. That moment might not come! Possibly it might not! He would go to bed and try and sleep. He must not let thoughts so bitter and so deadly overwhelm him, eating into the substance of his brain, where they could breed and batten on the finest tissues and breed again.

He was looking at his desk and saw that one letter had tumbled from it on to the floor by his chair. He went across and picked it up. It was addressed in a big straggling hand – and had not come by post. He tore it open. It was from Gwendolen Scott. This was why she had come into the library. Without moving from the position where he stood he read it through.

CHAPTER XIII

THE EFFECT OF SUGGESTION

The clock struck midnight, and yet the Warden had not done what he had intended to do before he picked up that letter and read it. He had not gone to bed. He was still in his library, not at his desk, but in a great shabby easy-chair by the fire. He had put the lights out and was smoking in the half-dark.

So deeply absorbed was the Warden in his own thoughts that he did not hear the first knock on the door. But he heard the second knock, which was louder.

"Come in," he called, and he leaned forward in his chair. Who wanted him at such an hour? It would not be any one from the college?

The door opened and Lady Dashwood came in. She was in a dressing-gown.

"You haven't gone to bed," she said.

It was obvious that he hadn't gone to bed.

"No, not yet," said the Warden. And he added, "Do you want me?"

"I ought not to want you, dear," she said, "for I know you must be very tired."

Then she came up to the fireplace and stood looking down at her brother. She saw that the spring and the hope had gone out of his face. He looked older.

"I have put Gwen to bed in my room, but even that has not quieted her," said Lady Dashwood, speaking slowly.

The Warden's face in the twilight looked set. He did not glance at his sister now.

"She has lost her self-control. Do you know what the silly child thinks she saw?"

Here Lady Dashwood paused, and waited for his reply.

"I hadn't thought. She fancied she saw something – a man!" he answered, in his deep voice.

He hadn't thought! There had been no room in his mind for anything but the doom that was awaiting him. One of his most bitter thoughts in the twilight of that room had been that a woman he could have loved was already under his roof when he took his destiny into his own hands and wrecked it.

"I don't know," he said, repeating mechanically an answer to his sister's question.

"She thought she saw the Barber's ghost," said Lady Dashwood.

The Warden looked up in surprise. There was a slight and bitter smile at the corners of his mouth. Then he straightened himself in his chair and looked frowning into the fire. That Gwendolen should have taken a college "story" seriously and "made a scene" about it was particularly repugnant to him.

"She came in here; why I don't know, and no doubt was full of the story about the Barber appearing in the library," said Lady Dashwood. "We ought not to have talked about it to any one so excitable. Then she knocked her head against the book-case and was in a state of daze, in which she could easily mistake the moonlight coming through an opening in the curtains for a ghost, and if a ghost, then of course the Barber's ghost. And so all this fuss!"

"I see," said the Warden, gloomily.

"As soon as we got upstairs, I had to pack Louise off before she had time to hear anything, for I can't have the whole household upset simply because a girl allows herself to become hysterical. May is now sitting with Gwen, as she won't be left alone for a moment."

"What are you going to do?" asked the Warden, in a slow hard voice.

"That's the question," she said, looking down at him narrowly.

"Do you want a doctor?" he asked. "Is it bad enough for that? It is rather late to ask any one to come in when there isn't any actual illness."

"A doctor would be worse than useless."

"Well, then, what do you suggest?" he asked.

"Couldn't you say something to her to quiet her?" said Lady Dashwood.

The Warden looked surprised. "I couldn't say anything, Lena, that you couldn't say. You can speak with authority when you like."

"More is wanted than that. She must be made to think she saw nothing here in this library," said Lady Dashwood. "You used to be able to 'suggest.' Don't you remember?"

The Warden pondered and said nothing.

"She would like to keep the whole house awake – if she had the chance," said Lady Dashwood, and the bitterness in her voice made her brother wince.

"Couldn't you make her believe that the ghost won't, or can't come again, or that there are no such things as ghosts?"

The Warden sat still; the glow was dying out of the cigar he held between his fingers. He did not move.

"When you were a boy you found it easy enough to suggest; I remember I disapproved of it. I want you to do it now, because we must have quiet in the house."

"She may not be susceptible to suggestion!" said the Warden, still obstinately keeping his seat.

"You think she is too flighty, that she has too little power of concentration," suggested Lady Dashwood, with a sting in her voice. "You must try: come, Jim! I want to get some rest, I'm very tired."

She did, indeed, look hollow-eyed, and seeing this he rose and threw his cigar into the fire. So this was the first thing he had to do as an engaged man: he had to prevent his future wife from disturbing the household. He had to distract her attention from absurd fears, he had to impose his will upon her. Such a relationship between them, the husband and wife that were to be, would be a relationship that he did not wish to have with any one whom he ought to respect, much less any one whom he ought to love.

The errand on which he was going was a repulsive one. If even a faint trace of romantic appreciation of the girl's beauty had survived in him, it would have vanished now. What he was going to do seemed like a denial of her identity, and yet it seemed necessary to do it. Had he still much of that "pity" left for her that had impelled him to offer her a home?

They left the library and, as they passed the curtained door of the Warden's bedroom, Lady Dashwood said, "You'll go to bed afterwards, Jim?"

She had spoken a moment ago of her own fatigue as if it was important. She had now forgotten it. Her mind was never occupied for many moments with herself, she was now back again at her old habit, thinking of him. He was tired. No wonder, worn out with worries, of his own making, alas!

"Yes," said the Warden, "yes, dear."

The lights in the hall were still burning, and he turned them out from the wall by the head of the staircase. Then they went up the short steps into the corridor. Lady Dashwood's room was at the end.

At the door of her room Lady Dashwood paused and listened, and turned round to her brother as if she were going to say something.

"What?" whispered the Warden, bending his head.

"Oh, nothing!" said Lady Dashwood, as if exasperated with her own thoughts. Then she opened the door and went in, followed by the Warden.

The room was not spacious, and the canopied bedstead looked too massive for the room. It had stood there through the reign of four of the Wardens, and Lady Dashwood had kept it religiously. Gwen was propped up on pillows at one side of it, looking out of her luminous eyes with great self-pity. Her dark hair was disordered. She glanced round tearfully and apprehensively. An acute observer might have detected that her alarm was a little over expressed: she had three spectators – and one of them was the Warden!

Near her stood May Dashwood in a black dressing-gown illumined by her auburn hair. It was tied behind at her neck and spread on each side and down her back in glistening masses. She looked like some priestess of an ancient cult, ministering to a soul distressed. The Warden stood for a moment arrested, looking across at them, and then his eyes rested on May alone.

Gwen made a curious movement into her pillows and May moved away from the bed. She seemed about to slip away from the room, but Lady Dashwood made her a sign to stay. It was such an imperative sign that May stayed. She went to the fireplace silently and stood there, and Lady Dashwood came to her. No one spoke. Lady Dashwood stood with face averted from the bed and closed her eyes, like one who waits patiently, but takes no part and no responsibility. May did not look at the bed, but she heard what was said and saw, without looking.

The Warden was now walking quietly round to the side where Gwendolen was propped. She made a convulsive movement of her arms towards him and sobbed hysterically —

"Oh, I'm so frightened!"

He approached her without responding either to her exclamation or her gestures. He put his hand on the electric lamp by the bed, raised the shade, and turned it so as to cast its light on his own face. While he did this there was silence.

Then he began to speak, and the sound of his voice made May's heart stir strangely. She leaned her elbow on the mantelpiece and pressed her hand over her eyes. All her prayers that night, all her self-reproach, meant very little. What were they but a pretence, a cloak to hide from herself the nakedness of her soul? No, they were not a pretence. Her prayer had been a real prayer for forgetfulness of herself. But in his presence the past seemed to slip away and leave her clamouring for relief from this strange present suffering, and from this dull empty aching below her heart when she drew her breath. She knew now how weak she was.

She could hear his voice saying: "What is it you are afraid of?" and as he spoke, it seemed to May herself that fear, of all things in the world, was the least real, and fear of spirits was an amazing folly.

"I thought I saw something," said Gwendolen, doubtfully; for already she was under the influence of his voice, his manner, his face; and her mind had begun to relax the tenacity of its hold on that one distracting fear.

"You thought you saw something," he said, emphasising the word "thought"; "you made a mistake. You saw nothing – you imagined you saw – there was nothing!"

May could not hear whether Gwendolen made any reply.

"And now I am going to prevent you from frightening yourself by imagining such foolish things again."

Although she did not look towards them, but kept her eyes on the ground, May was aware that the Warden was now bending over the bed, and he was speaking in an inaudible voice. She could hear the girl move round on the pillow in obedience to some direction of his. After this there came a brief silence between them that seemed an age of intolerable misery to May, and then she perceived that the Warden was turning out the bed light, and she heard him move away from the bed. He walked to the door very quietly, as if to avoid awakening a sleeper.

"Good night," he said in a low voice, and then, without turning towards them, he went out of the room.

The door was closed. The two women moved, looked at each other, and then glanced at the bed. Gwen was lying still; she had slid down low on her pillows, with her face towards the windows and her eyes closed. They stood motionless and intent, till they could see in the dim light that the girl was breathing quietly and slowly in sleep. Then Lady Dashwood spoke in a whisper.

"Now, I suppose, I can go to bed!"

Then she looked round at May. "Go to bed, May! You look worn out."

"Shall you sleep?" whispered May Dashwood, but she spoke as if she wasn't listening for an answer.

"I don't know," said Lady Dashwood, in a whisper too. "It's so like life. The person who has made all the fuss is comfortably asleep, and we who have had to endure the fuss, we who are worn out with it, are awake and probably won't sleep."

May moved towards the door and her aunt followed her. When May opened the door and went outside, Lady Dashwood did not close the door or say good night. She stood for a moment undecided, and then came outside herself and pulled the door to softly behind her.

"May!" she said, and she laid a detaining hand on her niece's arm.

"What, Aunt Lena?"

"If he liked, he could repel her, make her dislike him! If he liked he could make her refuse to marry him! You understand what I mean? He must know this now. The idea will be in his mind. He'll think it over. But I've no hope. He won't act on it. He'll only think of it as a temptation that he must put aside."

May did not answer.

"He could," said Lady Dashwood; "but he won't. He thinks himself pledged. And he isn't even in love with her. He isn't even infatuated for the moment!"

"You can't be sure."

"I am sure," said Lady Dashwood.

"How?" And now May turned back and listened for an answer with downcast eyes.

"I asked him a question – which he refused to answer. If he were in love he would have answered it eagerly. Why, he would have forced me to listen to it."

May Dashwood moved away from her aunt. "Still – they are engaged," she said. "They are engaged – that is settled."

Lady Dashwood spoke in a low, detaining voice. "Wait, May! Somehow she has got hold of him – somehow. Often the weak victimise the strong. Those who clamour for what they want, get it. Every day the wise are sacrificed to fools. I know it, and yet I sleep in peace. But when Jim is to be sacrificed – I can't sleep. I am like a withered leaf, blown by the wind."

May took her aunt's arm and laid her cheek against her shoulder.

"How can I sleep," said Lady Dashwood, "when I think of him, worried into the grave by petty anxieties, by the daily fretting of an irresponsible wife, by the hopeless daily task of trying to make something honourable and worthy – out of Belinda and Co.? When I say Belinda and Co., I think not merely of Belinda Scott and her child, but of all that Jim hates: the whole crew of noisy pleasure-hunters that float upon the surface of our social life. The time may come when we shall say to our social parasites, 'Take up your burden of life and work!' The time will come! But meanwhile Jim has to be sacrificed because he is hopelessly just. And yet I wouldn't have him otherwise. Go, dear, try and sleep, for all my talk." Then, as she drew away from her niece, she said in a tense whisper: "What an unforgivable fool he has been!"

May closed her eyes intently and said nothing.

"Oh, May," sighed Lady Dashwood, "forgive me; I feel so bitter that I could speak against God."

May looked up and laid her hand on her aunt's arm.

"You know those lines, Aunt Lena —

"Measure thy life by loss and not by gain,Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth!"

Lady Dashwood's eyes flashed. "If Jim had offered his life for England I could say that: but are we to pour forth wine to Belinda and Co.?"

The two women looked at each other; stared, silently.

Then Lady Dashwood began to turn the handle of the door.

"Why should he be sacrificed to – to – futilities?" Then she added very softly: "I have had no son of my own, May, so Jim fills the vacant place. I think I could, like Abraham, have sacrificed my son to the Great God of my nation, but this sacrifice! Oh, May, it's so silly! He might have married some nice, quiet Oxford girl any day. And he has waited for this!"

She saw the pain in May's eyes and added: "I am wearing you out with my talk. I am getting very selfish. I am thinking too much of my own suffering. You, too, have suffered, dear, and you say nothing," and as she spoke her voice softened to a whisper. "But, May, your sacrifice was to the Great God of your nation – the Great God of all nations."

"The sacrifice had nothing to do with me," said May, turning away. "It was his."

"But you endure the loss, the vacant place," said Lady Dashwood.

"I know what a vacant place means," said May, quietly, "and my vacant place will never be filled – except by the children of other women! Good night, dear aunt," and she walked away quickly, without looking back. Then she found the door of her room and went in.

Lady Dashwood's eyes followed her, till the door closed.

"I ought not to have said what I did," murmured Lady Dashwood. "Oh, dear May, poor May," and she went back into her room.

Gwen was still sleeping peacefully.

CHAPTER XIV

DIFFERENT VIEWS

The Lodgings at King's were built at a period when the college demanded that its Warden should be a bachelor and a divine, and it contained neither morning-room nor boudoir. The Warden's breakfast-room was used by Lady Dashwood for both purposes.

It was not such an inconvenient arrangement, because the Warden, as the war advanced, had reduced his breakfast till it was now little more than the continental "petit déjeuner," and it could be as rapidly removed as it was brought in.

The breakfast-room was a small room and had no academic dignity, it was what Mrs. Robinson called "cosy." It was badly lighted by one window, and that barred, looking into the quadrangle. The walls were wainscoted. One or two pictures brightened it, landscapes in water-colour that had been bought by the Warden long ago for his rooms when he was a college tutor.

At the breakfast table on the morning following Gwendolen's brief interview with the Barber's ghost, her place was empty.

No one remarked on her absence. The Warden came in as if nothing had happened on the previous night. He did not even ask the ladies how they had slept, or if they had slept. He appeared to have forgotten all about last night, and he seated himself at the table and began opening his letters.

Mrs. Dashwood gave him one furtive glance when he came in and responded to his salutation. Then she also sat in silence and looked over her letters. She was making a great effort not to mind what happened to her, not to feel that outside these few rooms in a corner of an ancient college, all the world stretched like a wilderness. And this effort made her face a little wan in the morning light.

Lady Dashwood poured out the coffee with a hand that was not quite as steady as usual, but she, too, made no reference to the events of last night. Nobody, of course, had slept but Gwendolen, and Gwendolen had awakened from her sleep fresh and rosy.

It was only after several minutes had passed that Lady Dashwood remarked across the table to the Warden —

"I have kept Gwendolen in bed for breakfast, not because she is ill, she is perfectly well, but because I want her to be alone, and to understand that she has completely got over her little hysterical fit and is sensible again."

The Warden looked up and then down again at his letters and said, "Yes!"

Lady Dashwood went on with her breakfast. She evidently did not expect any discussion. She had merely wished to make some reference to the occurrence of last night in such a way as not to reopen the subject, but to close the subject – for ever.

"Is it your club morning?" asked the Warden, as he looked over his letters.

"Yes," said Lady Dashwood.

"I'll come and help you to cut out," said May. "I'm an old hand."

"Why should you come?" said Lady Dashwood. "This is your holiday, and it's short enough."

She thought that the Warden noted the words, "short enough."

"I shall come," said May, and glancing at her aunt as she spoke, she now fancied her grown a little thinner in the face since last night only that it was impossible. The lines in the face were accentuated by want of sleep, it was that that made her face look thinner.

"I shall take Gwen," said Lady Dashwood. "She can hand us scissors and pins, and can pick up the bits." She spoke quite boldly and quietly of Gwendolen, and met May's eye without a flicker. "Our plan, May, is to get these young mothers and teach them at least how to make and mend their clothes. It isn't war work. It's 'after the war' work. Those young mothers who have done factory work, know nothing about anything. We must get something into their noddles. Two or three ladies will be there this morning, and we shall get all the work ready for the next club meeting – mothers and babies. Babies are entertained in a separate room. We have tea and one half-hour's reading; the rest of the time gossip. Oh, how they do talk!"

"How much do you expect to get from the Sale of work to-day for your club?" asked May, avoiding the Warden's eye when he put out his hand to her for the cup of coffee that she was passing him.

"Not very much," said Lady Dashwood, "but enough, I hope."

A moment later and Lady Dashwood was opening her letters.

"Mr. Boreham," she remarked suddenly, "is bringing Mrs. Potten in to the Sale. He is the last person I should expect to meet at a Sale of work in aid of a mother's club."

The Warden raised his eyes and apparently addressed the coffee-pot across the table.

"Boreham is usually suspicious of anything that is organised by what he calls 'respectable people.'" Then he looked round at May Dashwood for the first time. The reason why Boreham was going to drive Mrs. Potten in to the Sale of work was obvious both to him and to Lady Dashwood. May did not meet the Warden's eye, though she was tinglingly conscious that they rested on her face.

"I object," she said, imitating Boreham's voice, "not only to the respectable members of the British public, but to the British public in general. I am irritated with and express my animosity to the people around me with frankness and courage. But I have no inimical feelings towards people whom I have never met. Them I respect and love. Their institutions, of which I know nothing, I honour."

The Warden's lips parted with a smile, as if the smile was wrung from him, but May did not smile. She was still making her effort, and was looking down into her plate, her eyebrows very much raised, as if she was contemplating there the portrait of somebody with compassionate interest.

Lady Dashwood saw the Warden's smile, and saw him lean forward to look at the downcast face of May, as if to note every detail of it.