The New Warden

Knowing her own weakness, she armed herself against it, by never carrying money about with her, except on rare occasions. When she travelled, her maid carried the money (with her head as the price of it).

This Friday morning, therefore, Mrs. Potten had a business duty before her, she had to squeeze ten shillings out of the weekly bills – a matter difficult in times of peace and more difficult in war time. It was a difficulty she meant to overcome.

Now on this Friday morning, after the Sale, Mrs. Potten motored into Oxford rather earlier than usual. She intended going to the Lodgings at King's before doing her shopping. Her reason for going to the Lodgings was an interesting one. She had just had a letter from Lady Belinda Scott, informing her that, even if she had been able to invite Gwendolen for Monday, Gwendolen could not accept the invitation, as the dear child was going to stay on at the Lodgings indefinitely. She was engaged to be married to the Warden! At this point in the letter Mrs. Potten put the paper upon the breakfast table and felt that the world was grey. Mrs. Potten liked men she admired to be bachelors or else widowers, either would do. She liked to feel that if only she had been ten years younger, and had not been so exclusively devoted to the memory of her husband, things might have – She never allowed herself to state definitely, even to herself, what they might have – , but as long as they might have – , there was over the world in which Mrs. Potten moved and thought a subtle veil of emotional possibilities.

So he was engaged! And what exasperated Mrs. Potten, as she read on, was Lady Belinda's playful hints that Lady Dashwood (dear old thing!) had manœuvred Gwendolen's visit in the first instance, and then kept her firmly a prisoner till the knot was tied. Hadn't it been clever? Then as to the Warden, he was madly, romantically in love, and what could a mother do but resign herself to the inevitable? It wasn't what she had hoped for Gwen! It was very, very different – very! She must not trust herself to speak on that subject because she had given her consent and the thing was done, and she meant to make the best of it loyally.

With this news surging in her head Mrs. Potten raced along the moist roadways towards the ancient and sacred city.

Lena ought to have told her about this engagement when they were sitting together in the rooms at Christ Church. It wasn't the right thing for an old friend to have preserved a mysterious silence, unless (Mrs. Potten was a woman with her wits about her) the engagement had been not Lady Dashwood's plan, but exclusively Belinda's plan and the daughter's plan, and the Warden had been "caught"!

"A liar," said Mrs. Potten, as she stared gloomily out of the open window, "is always a liar!"

Mrs. Potten rang the door-bell at the Lodging and waited for the answer with much warmth of interest. Suppose Lena was not at home? What should she do? She must thrash out this matter. Lena would be certain to be at home, it was so early!

She was at home!

Mrs. Potten walked upstairs, her mind agitated with mingled emotions, and also the hope of meeting the Warden, incidentally. But she did not meet the Warden. He was not either coming up or going down, and Mrs. Potten found herself alone in the drawing-room.

She could not sit down, she walked up to the fireplace and stared through her glasses for a moment at the portrait. It was quite true that the man was a very good-looking Warden! Yes, but scarcely the sort of person she would have thought suitable to look after young men; and then she walked away to the window. She was framing in her mind the way in which she should open the subject of her call at this early hour. She almost started when she heard the door click, and turned round to see Lady Dashwood coming towards her.

"Dear one, how tired you look!" said Mrs. Potten; "and I really ought not to have come at this unholy hour – "

"It's not so early," said Lady Dashwood. "You know work begins in this house at eight o'clock in the morning."

"So much the better," said Mrs. Potten. "I don't like the modern late hours. In old days our Prime Ministers were up at six in the morning attending to their correspondence. When are they up now, I should like to know? Well," she added, "I have come to offer you my congratulations. I got a letter this morning from Lady Belinda, telling me all about it. No, I won't sit down, I merely ran in for a moment."

Lady Dashwood did not smile. She simply repeated: "From Belinda, telling you all about it!"

Mrs. Potten noted the sarcasm underlying the remark.

"Humph!" said Mrs. Potten. "And you, my dear, said nothing yesterday, though we sat together for half an hour."

"They were not engaged till yesterday evening," said Lady Dashwood.

"Belinda writing yesterday speaks of this engagement having already taken place," said Mrs. Potten; "but, of course, she is wrong."

"Yes," said Lady Dashwood.

"Ah!" cried Mrs. Potten, nodding her head up and down once or twice.

"Jim has gone to town this morning," said Lady Dashwood.

"To buy a ring?" said Mrs. Potten. "Well, I really ought to have brought you Lady Belinda's letter to read. She thinks you have got your heart's desire. That's her way of looking at it."

Lady Dashwood made no answer.

"I never think lies are amusing," said Mrs. Potten, "when you know they are lies. But you see, you never said a word. Well, well, so Dr. Middleton is engaged!"

"Yes, engaged," repeated Lady Dashwood.

"I'm afraid you're tired," said Mrs. Potten. "You did too much yesterday."

"I'm tired," said Lady Dashwood.

"I always expected," said Mrs. Potten, "that the Warden would have found some nice, steady, capable country rector's daughter. But I suppose, being a man as well as a Warden, he fell in love with a pretty face, eh?" and Mrs. Potten moved as if to go. "Well, she is a lucky girl."

"Very lucky," said Lady Dashwood.

Then Mrs. Potten stared closely with her short-sighted eyes into her friend's face and saw such resigned miseries there that Mrs. Potten felt a stirring movement of those superficial emotions of which we have already spoken.

"I could have wept for her, my dear," said Mrs. Potten, addressing an imaginary companion as she went through the court of the Warden's Lodgings to the car, which she had left standing in the street. "I could have wept for her and for the Warden – poor silly man – and he looks so wise," she added incredulously. "And," she went on, "she wouldn't say a word against the girl or against Belinda. Too proud, I suppose."

Just as she was getting into the car Harding was passing. He stopped, and in his best manner informed her that his wife had told him that the proceeds of the Sale amounted to ninety-three pounds ten shillings and threepence.

"Very good," said Mrs. Potten; "excellent!"

"And we are much indebted to our kind friends who patronised the Sale."

Mrs. Potten thought of her Buckinghamshire collar and the shilling pincushion that she need not have bought.

"I shall tell my wife," said Harding, with much unction, "that you think it very satisfactory."

It did indeed seem to Mrs. Potten (whose income was in thousands) that ninety-three pounds, ten shillings and threepence was a very handsome sum for the purpose of assisting fifty or sixty young mothers of the present generation.

But she had little time to think of this for just by her, walking past her from the Lodgings, came Miss Gwendolen Scott. Now, what was Mrs. Potten to do? Why, congratulate her, of course! The thing had to be done! She called to Gwendolen, who came to the side of the car all blushes.

"She's pleased – that's plain," said Mrs. Potten to herself.

But Mrs. Potten was mistaken. Gwendolen's vivid colour came not from the cause which Mrs. Potten imagined. Gwendolen's colour came simply from alarm at the sight of Mrs. Potten and Mr. Harding speaking to one another, and this alarm was not lessened when Mrs. Potten exclaimed —

"Mr. Harding has been telling me that you made ninety-three pounds, ten shillings and threepence from the Sale?"

"Oh, did we?" murmured Gwendolen, and her colour came and went away.

"We did, thanks to Mrs. Potten's purchases," said Harding, with obsequious playfulness, and he took his leave.

Then Mrs. Potten leaned over the car towards Gwendolen and whispered —

"I was waiting till he had gone, as I don't know if you intend all Oxford to know – "

Gwendolen's lips were pouted into a terrified expression.

"Your engagement, I mean," explained Mrs. Potten.

Gwendolen breathed again, and now she laughed. Oh, why had she been so frightened? That silly little affair of yesterday was over, it was dead and buried! It was absolutely safe, and here was the first real proper congratulations and acknowledgment of her importance.

"You've got a charming man, very charming," said Mrs. Potten.

Gwendolen admitted that she had, and then Mrs. Potten waved her hand and was gone.

That morning, when Gwendolen had come down to breakfast, she wondered how she was going to be received, and whether she would have to wait again for recognition as the future Mrs. Middleton. Breakfast had been put half an hour later.

She had found Lady Dashwood and Mrs. Dashwood already at breakfast. The Warden had had breakfast alone a little before eight. Lady Dashwood called to her and, when she came near, kissed her, and said very quietly —

"The Warden has told me."

And then Mrs. Dashwood smiled and stretched out her hand and said: "I have been allowed to hear the news."

And Gwendolen had looked at them both and said: "Thanks ever so much. I can scarcely believe it, only I know it's true!"

However, the glamour of the situation was gone because the Warden's seat was empty. He could be heard in the hall; the taxi could be heard and the door slamming, and he never came in to say "Good-bye"! Still it was all exhilarating and wonderfully full of hope and promise, and mysterious to a degree!

The conversation at breakfast was not about herself, but that did not matter, she was occupied with happy thoughts. Now all this, everything she looked at and everything she happened to touch, was hers. Everything was hers from the silver urn down to the very salt spoons. The cup that Lady Dashwood was just raising to her lips was hers, Gwendolen's.

And now as she walked along Broad Street, after leaving Mrs. Potten, how gay the world seemed – how brilliant! Even the leaden grey sky was joyful! To Gwendolen there was no war, no sorrow, no pain! There was no world beyond, no complexity of moral forces, no great piteous struggle for an ideal, no "Christ that is to be!" She was engaged and was going shopping!

It was, however, a pity that she had only ten shillings. That would not get a really good umbrella. Oh, look at those perfectly ducky gloves in the window they were only eight and elevenpence!

Gwendolen stared at the window. Stopping to look at shop windows had been strictly forbidden by her mother, but her dear mother was not there! So Gwendolen peered in intently. What about getting those gloves instead of the umbrella?

She marched into the shop, rather bewildered with her own thoughts. The gloves were shown her by the same woman who had served Lady Dashwood a day or two ago, and who recognised her and smiled respectfully. The gloves were sweet; the gauntlets were exactly what she preferred to any others. And the colour was right. Gwendolen was fingering her purse when the shopwoman said —

"Do you want to pay for them, or shall I enter them, miss?"

Gwendolen's brain worked. She was now definitely engaged, and in a few weeks no doubt would be Mrs. Middleton; after that a bill of eight and elevenpence would be a trifle.

"Enter them, please," said Gwendolen, and she surprised herself by hearing her own voice asking for the umbrella department.

After this, problems that had in the past appeared insoluble, arranged themselves without any straining effort on her part; they just straightened themselves out and went "right there."

She looked at a plain umbrella for nine and sixpence, and then examined one at fifteen and eleven. Thereupon she was shown another at twenty-five shillings, which was more respectable looking and had a nice top. It was clearly her duty to choose this, anything poorer would lower the dignity of the future Mrs. Middleton. Gwendolen was learning the "duties" she owed to the station in life to which God had called her. She found no sort of difficulty in this kind of learning, and it was far more really useful than book learning which is proverbially deleterious to the character. She had the umbrella, too, put down to Miss Scott, the Lodgings, King's College. When she got out of the shop the ten-shilling note was still in her purse.

"I shall get some chocolates," she said. "A few!"

CHAPTER XXI

THE SOUL OF MRS. POTTEN

Mrs. Potten was emerging from a shop in Broad Street when she caught sight of Mr. Bingham, in cap and gown, passing her and called to him. He stopped and walked a few steps with her, while she informed him that the proceeds of the Sale had come to ninety-three pounds, ten shillings and threepence; but this was only in order to find out whether he had heard of that poor dear Warden's engagement. It was all so very foolish!

"Only that!" said Bingham, who was evidently in ignorance of the event; "and after I bought a table-cloth, which I find goes badly with my curtains, and bedroom slippers, that are too small now I've tried them on. Well, Mrs. Potten, you did your best, anyhow, flinging notes about all over Christ Church. Was the second note found?"

"The second note?" exclaimed Mrs. Potten. "What d'ye mean?"

"You dropped one note at Christ Church, and you would have lost another if Harding hadn't discovered that you had given him an extra note and restored it to Miss Scott. I suppose Miss Scott pretended that it was she who had been clever enough to rescue the note for you?"

"No, she did not," said Mrs. Potten; and here she paused and remained silent, for her brain was seething with tumultuous thoughts.

"Well, but for Harding, the Sale would have made a cool ninety-three pounds, fifteen shillings and threepence. Do you follow me?"

Mrs. Potten did follow him and with much agitation.

"How do you know it was my note and not Miss Scott's own note?" she asked, and there was in her tone a twang of cunning, for Bingham's remarks had roused not only the emotional superficies of Mrs. Potten's nature, but had pierced to the very core where lay the thought of money.

"Because," replied Bingham, "Miss Scott, who was running like a two-year-old, was not likely to have unfastened your note and fitted one of her own under it so tightly that Harding, whose mind is quite accustomed to the solution of simple problems, had to blow 'poof' to separate them. No, take the blame on yourself, Mrs. Potten, and in future have a purse-bearer."

Mrs. Potten's mind was in such a state of inward indignation that she went past the chemist's shop, and was now within a few yards of the Sheldonian Theatre. She had become forgetful of time and place, and was muttering to herself —

"What a little baggage – what a little minx!" and other remarks unheard by Bingham.

"I see you are admiring that semicircle of splendid heads that crown the palisading of the Sheldonian," said Bingham, as they came up close to the historic building.

"Admiring them!" exclaimed Mrs. Potten. "They are monstrosities."

"They are perfectly sweet, as ladies say," contradicted Bingham; "we wouldn't part with them for the world."

"What are they?" demanded Mrs. Potten, trying hard to preserve an outward calm and discretion.

"Jupiter Tonans – or Plato," said Bingham, "and in progressive stages of senility."

"Why don't you have handsome heads?" said Mrs. Potten, and she began to cross the road with Bingham. Bingham was crossing the road because he was going that way, and Mrs. Potten drifted along with him because she was too much excited to think out the matter.

"They are handsome," said Bingham.

Mrs. Potten was speechless. Suddenly she discovered that she was hurrying in the wrong direction, just as if she were running away with Mr. Bingham. She paused at the curb of the opposite pavement.

"Mr. Bingham," she said, arresting him.

He stopped.

"I must go back," she said. "I quite forgot that my car may be waiting for me at the chemist's!" and then she fumbled with her bag, and then looked thoughtfully into Bingham's face as they stood together on the curb. "Bernard always lunches with me on Sundays," she said; "I shall be glad to see you any Sunday if you want a walk, and we can talk about the removal of those heads."

Bingham gave a cordial but elusive reply, and, raising his cap, he sauntered away eastwards, his gown flying out behind him in the light autumn wind.

Mrs. Potten re-crossed the road and walked slowly back to the chemist's. Her car was there waiting for her, and it contained her weekly groceries, her leg of mutton, and the unbleached calico for the making of hospital slings which she had bought in Queen's Street, because she could obtain it there at 4 ½d. per yard.

She went into the chemist's and bought some patent pills, all the time thinking hard. She had two witnesses to Gwendolen Scott's having possession of the note: Mr. Harding and Mr. Bingham; and one witness, Lady Dashwood, to her having delivered the collar and not the note! All these witnesses were unconscious of the meaning of the transaction. She, Mrs. Potten, alone could piece together the evidence and know what it meant, and it was by a mere chance that she had been able to do this. If she had not met Mr. Bingham (and she had never met him before in the street), and if she had not happened to have mentioned the proceeds of the Sale, she would still be under the impression that the note had been mislaid.

"And the impertinence of the young woman!" exclaimed Mrs. Potten, as she paid for her pills. "And she fancies herself in a position of trust, if you please! She means to figure, if you please, at the head of an establishment where we send our sons to be kept out of mischief for a bit! Well, I never heard of anything like it. Why, she'll be tampering with the bills!"

Mrs. Potten's indignation did not wane as the moments passed, but rather waxed.

"And her mother is condescending about the engagement! Why," added Mrs. Potten to herself with emphasis, as she got into her car – "why, if this had happened with one of my maids, I should have put it into the hands of the police."

"The Lodgings, King's," she said to the chauffeur. What was she going to do when she got there?

Mrs. Potten had no intention of bursting into the Lodgings in order to demand an explanation from Miss Scott. No, thank you, Miss Scott must wait upon Mrs. Potten. She must come out to Potten End and make her explanation! But Mrs. Potten was going to the Lodgings merely to ensure that this would be done on the instant.

"Don't drive in," she called, and getting out of the car she walked into the court and went up the two shallow steps of the front door and rang at the bell.

The retroussé nose of Robinson Junior appeared at the opened door. Lady Dashwood was not at home and was not expected till half-past one. It was then one o'clock. Mrs. Potten mused for a little and then asked if she might see Lady Dashwood's maid for a moment. Robinson Junior suppressed his scornful surprise that any one should want to see Louise, and ushered Mrs. Potten into the Warden's breakfast-room, and there, seating herself near the window, she searched for a visiting card and a pencil. Louise appeared very promptly.

"Madame wishes something?" she remarked as she closed the door behind her, and stood surveying Mrs. Potten from that distance.

"I do," said Mrs. Potten, taking in Louise's untidy blouse, her plain features, thick complexion and luminous brown eyes in one comprehensive glance. "Can you tell me if Miss Scott will be in for luncheon?" Mrs. Potten spoke French with a strong English accent and much originality of style.

Yes, Miss Scott was returning to luncheon.

"And do you know if the ladies have afternoon engagements?"

Louise thought they had none, because Lady Dashwood was to be at home to tea. That she knew for certain, and she added in a voice fraught with import: "I shall urge Madame to rest after lunch."

"Humph! I see you look after her properly," said Mrs. Potten, beginning to write on her card with the pencil; "I thought she was looking very tired when I saw her this morning."

"Tired!" exclaimed Louise; "Madame is always tired in Oxford."

"Relaxing climate," said Mrs. Potten as she wrote.

"And this house does not suit Madame," continued Louise, motionless at the door.

"The drains wrong, perhaps," said Mrs. Potten, with absolute indifference.

"I know nothing of drains, Madame," said Louise, "I speak of other things."

"Sans doute il y a du 'dry rot,'" said Mrs. Potten, looking at what she had written.

"Ah!" exclaimed Louise, clasping her hands, "Madame has heard; I did not know his name, but what matter? Ghosts are always ghosts, and my Lady Dashwood has never been the same since that night, never!"

Mrs. Potten stared but she did not express surprise, she wanted to hear more without asking for more.

"Madame knows that the ghost comes to bring bad news about the Warden!"

"Bad news!" said Mrs. Potten, and she put her pencil back into her bag and wondered whether the news of the Warden's engagement had reached the servants' quarters.

"A disaster," said Louise. "Always a disaster – to Monsieur the Warden. Madame understands?"

Louise gazed at Mrs. Potten as if she hoped that that lady had information to give her. But Mrs. Potten had none. She was merely thinking deeply.

"Well," she said, rising, "I suppose most old houses pretend to have ghosts. We have one at Potten End, but I have never seen it myself, and, as far as I know, it does no harm and no good. But Madame didn't see the ghost you speak of?" and here Mrs. Potten smiled a little satirically.

"It was Miss Scott," said Louise, darkly.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Potten, with a short laugh. "Oh, well!" and she came towards the maid with the card in her hand. "Now, will you be good enough to give this to Madame the moment that she returns and say that it is 'Urgent,' d'une importance extrème."

"Well," said Mrs. Potten to herself, as she walked through the court and gained the street, "and I should think it was a disaster for a quiet, respectable Warden of an Oxford college to marry a person of the Scott type."

As to Louise, when she had closed the front door on Mrs. Potten's retreating figure, she gazed hard at the card in her hand. The writing was as follows: —

"Dear Lena,

"Can Miss Scott come to see me this afternoon without fail? Very kindly allow her to come early.

"M. P."

It did not contain anything more.

Now, Mrs. Potten really believed in ghosts, but she thought of them as dreary, uninteresting intruders on the world's history. There was Hamlet's father's ghost that spoke at such length, and there was the spirit that made Abraham's hair stand on end as it passed before him, and then there was the ghost of Samuel that appeared to Saul and prophesied evil. But of all ghosts, the one that Mrs. Potten thought most dismal, was the ghost of the man-servant who came out from a mansion, full of light and music, one winter night on a Devon bye-road. There he stood in the snow directing the lost travellers to the nearest inn, and (this was what struck Mrs. Potten's soul to the core) the half-crown (an actual precious piece of money) that was dropped into his hand – fell through the palm – on to the snow – and so the travellers knew that they had spoken to a spirit, and were leaving behind them a ghostly house with ghostly lights and the merriment of the dead.

Mrs. Potten's mind worked in columns, and had she been calm and happy she would have spent the time returning to Potten End in completing the list of ghosts she was acquainted with; but she was excited and full of tumultuous thoughts.

There was, indeed, in Mrs. Potten's soul the strife of various passions: there was the desire to act in a high-handed, swift Potten manner, the desire to pursue and flatten any one who invaded the Potten preserves. There was the desire to put her heavy individual foot upon a specimen of the modern female who betrays the honour and the interest of her own class. There was also the general desire to show a fool that she was a fool. There was also the desire to snub Belinda Scott; and lastly, but not least, there was the desire to put her knife into any giddy young girl who had thrown her net over the Warden.