The New Warden

Boreham simply stared at her. "I am confused," he said. "Confused!"

"Oh, please don't imagine that I meant you," she entreated. "I never for one single instant thought of you. I should never have imagined! I am so sorry!"

And yet this humble apology did not mollify him. Gwen almost felt frightened. Everything seemed going to pieces, and she was no nearer knowing what the legal aspects of her case were.

"Have you found your handkerchief?" Boreham asked, and the spikes in his eyebrows seemed to twitch.

"It was in my band, all the time," said Gwen, smiling deprecatingly. "Oh, what a bother everything was!"

"Then we have wasted precious time for nothing," said Boreham. "All the fun is going on downstairs – come along, Miss Wallace."

Boreham knew her name wasn't Wallace, but Wallace was Scotch and that was near enough, when he was angry.

Gwen went downstairs as if she were in an ugly dream. Her brief happiness and security and pleasure at her own importance was vanishing. This broad staircase that she was descending on Boreham's stiff and rebellious arm; this wall with its panelling and its dim pictures of strange men's faces; these wide doors thrown back through which one went solemnly into the long dining-room; this dining-room itself dim and dignified; all this was going to be hers – only – . Gwendolen, as she emerged into the glow of the long oval table, could see nothing but the face of Mrs. Dashwood, gently brilliant, and the Warden roused to attentive interest. What was Gwen to do? There was nobody whom she could consult. Should she write to her mother? Her mother would scold her! What, then, was she to do? Perhaps she had better write to her mother, and let her see that she had, at any rate, tried her best. And in saying the words to herself "tried her best," Gwen was not speaking the truth even to herself. She had not tried at all; the whole thing had come about accidentally. It had somehow happened!

Instead of going straight to bed that evening Gwen seated herself at the writing-table in her bedroom. She must write a letter to her mother and ask for advice. The letter must go as soon as possible. Gwen knew that if she put it off till the morning, it might never get written. She was always too sleepy to get up before breakfast. In Oxford breakfast for Dons was at eight o'clock, and that was far too early, as it was, for Gwen. Then after breakfast, there was "no time" to do anything, and so on, during the rest of the day.

So Gwen sat at her writing-table and wrote the longest letter she had ever written. Gwen's handwriting was pointed, it was also shaky, and generally ran downhill, or else uphill.

"Dear Mummy,

"Please write and tell me what to do? I've done all I could, but everything is in a rotten muddle. This evening I was crying, crying a little at your letter – I really couldn't help it – but anyhow it turned out all right – and the Warden suddenly came along the passage and saw me. He took me into his library, I don't know how it all happened, Mummy, but he put his arms round me and told me to come to him if I wanted a home. He was sweet, and I naturally thought this was true, and I said 'Yes' and 'Thanks.' There wasn't time for more, because of dinner. But a Mr. Boarham, who is a sort of cousin of Dr. Middleton, says that proposals are all words and that you needn't be married. What am I to do? I don't know if I am really engaged or not – because the Warden hasn't said anything more – and suppose he doesn't – Isn't it rotten? Do write and tell me what to do, for I feel so queer. What makes me worried is Mrs. Dashwood, a widow, talks so much. At dinner the Warden seemed so much taken up by her – quite different. But then after dinner it wasn't like that. We sat in the drawing-room all the time and at least the men smoked and Lady Dashwood and me, but not Mrs. Dashwood, who said she was Early Victorian, and ought to have died long ago. She worked. Lady Dashwood said that she smoked because she was a silly old heathen, and that made me feel beastly. It wasn't fair – but Lady Dashwood is often rather nasty. But afterwards he was nice, and asked me to play my reverie by Slapovski. I have never forgotten it, Mummy, though I haven't been taught it for six months. I am telling you everything so that you know what has happened. Well, Mr. Borham said, 'For God's sake don't let's have any music.' He said that like he always does. It is very rude. Of course I refused to play, and the Warden was so nice, and he looked at me very straight and did not look at Mrs. Dashwood now. I think it must be all right. He sat in an armchair opposite us, and put his elbow on the arm and held the back of his neck – he does that, and smoked again and stared all the time at the carpet by Mrs. Dashwood's shoes, and never looked at her, but talked a lot. I can't understand what they say, and it is worse now Mrs. D. is here. Only once I saw him look up at her, and then he had that severe look. So I don't think any harm has happened. You know what I mean, Mummie. I was afraid he might like her. I tell you everything so as you can judge and advise me, for I could not tell all this to old Lady Dashwood, of course. Lady Dashwood says smoking cigars in the drawing-room is good for the furniture!!! I thought it very disgusting of Mr. Borham to say, 'For God's sake.' He used not to believe in God, and even now he hasn't settled whether there is a God. We are all to go to Chartcote House for lunch. There is to be a Bazaar – I forget what for, somewhere. I have no money except half-a-crown. I have not paid for my laundry, so I can leave that in a drawer. Now, dear Mummy, do write at once and say exactly what I am to do, and tell me if I am engaged or not.

"Your affectionate daughter,"Gwen.

"I like the Warden ever so much, and partly because he does not wear a beard. I feel very excited, but am trying not to. Mrs. D. is to stay a whole week, till I go on the 3rd."

Gwen laid down her pen and sat looking at the sheet of paper before her. She had told her mother "everything." She had omitted nothing, except that her mother's letter had dropped somewhere, either in the library or the staircase, and she could not find it again. If it had dropped in the library, somebody had picked it up. Supposing the Warden had picked it up and read it? The clear sharp understanding of "honour" possessed by the best type of Englishman and Englishwoman was not possessed by Gwen – it has not been acquired by the Belindas of Society or of the Slums. But no, Gwen felt sure that the Warden hadn't found it, or he would have been very, very angry. Then who had picked it up?

CHAPTER V

WAITING

If Pilate had uttered the sardonic remark "What is truth?" in Boreham's presence, he would certainly have compelled that weary official to wait for definite enlightenment. Boreham would have explained to him that although Absolute Truth (if there is such a thing) lies, like our Destiny, in the lap of the gods, he, Boreham, had a thoroughly reliable stock of useful truths with which he could supply any inquirer. Indeed to Boreham, the discussing of truths was a comparatively simple matter. Truths were of two kinds. Firstly, they were what he, himself, was convinced of at the moment of speaking; and secondly, they were not what the man next him believed in. Boreham found intolerable any assertion made by people he knew. He knew them! Voila! But he felt he could very fairly well trust opinions expressed by the native inhabitants of – say Pomerania – or still better – India.

Boreham had already some acquaintances in Oxford to whom he spoke, as he said himself, "frankly and fearlessly," and who tolerated him, whenever they had time to listen to him, because he was entirely harmless and merely tiresome. But he was not surprised (it had occurred before) that the Warden refused his invitation to lunch at Chartcote. The ladies had accepted; and when Boreham said "the ladies," on this occasion he was thinking solely of Mrs. Dashwood. Lady Dashwood had accepted the invitation because it was given verbally. She made no purely social engagements. The Warden, himself, did not entertain during the war, and the only engagements were those of business, or of hospitality of an academic nature.

The day following May Dashwood's arrival was entirely uneventful. The Warden was mostly invisible. May was as bright as she had been on her arrival. Gwen went about wide-eyed and wistful, and spoke spasmodically. Lady Dashwood was serene and satisfied. A shy Don accompanied by a very nice, untidy wife, appeared at lunch, and they were introduced by the Warden as Mr. and Mrs. Stockwell. Mr. Stockwell was struck dumb at finding himself seated next to Mrs. Dashwood, a type of female little known to him. But May bravely taking him in hand, he recovered his powers of speech and became epigrammatic and sparkling. This round-shouldered, spectacled scholar, with a large nose and receding chin, poured out brilliant observations, subtile and suggestive, and had an apparently inexhaustible store of the literature of Europe. He sat sideways in his chair and spoke into May's sympathetic ear, giving an occasional swift appealing glance at the Warden, who came within the range of his vision.

How Stockwell ate his food was impossible to discover. He seemed to give automatic twiddles to his fork and apparently swallowed something afterwards, for when Robinson's underling, Robinson petit fils, removed Stockwell's plates, they contained only wreckage.

The Warden, aided by Lady Dashwood, struggled courteously with Mrs. Stockwell. She was obliged to talk across Gwendolen, who spent her time silently observing Mrs. Dashwood.

Mrs. Stockwell had pathetic pretensions to intellectuality, based on a masterly acquaintance with the names of her husband's books and the fact that she lived in the academic circle. She had drooped visibly at the first sight of her hostess and Mrs. Dashwood, but was soon put at her ease by Lady Dashwood, who deftly drew her away from vague hints at the possession of learning into talk about her children. Gwen, watching the Warden and Mrs. Dashwood across Mrs. Stockwell's imitation lace front, could not be moved to speech. To any one in the secret there was written on her face two absorbing questions: "Am I engaged or not?" "Is she trying to oust me?"

The Warden's enigmatic eyes held no information in them. He looked at her gravely when he did look, and – that was all. Was he waiting to know whether he was engaged or not? Gwen doubted it. He would be sure to know everything. He would know. Think of all those books in the library! Supposing he had found that letter – suppose he had read it? No, if he had, he would have looked not merely grave, but angry!

When the ladies rose from the table, Stockwell rose too, reluctantly and as if waking from a pleasant dream. He stared in a startled way at the Warden, who moved to open the door; he looked as if about to spring – then refrained, and resigning himself to the unmistakable decision of the Fates, he remained standing, staring down at the table-cloth through his spectacles, with his cheeks flushed and his heart glad.

Mrs. Stockwell passed out of the room in front of May Dashwood, gratified, warm and trying to conceal the backs of her boots.

Finally the Stockwells went away, and then Lady Dashwood took her niece to the Magdalen walk. There among the last shreds of autumn, and in that muzzy golden sunshine of Oxford, they walked and talked with the constraint of Gwen's presence.

At tea two or three people called, but the Warden did not appear even for a hasty cup. At dinner an old pupil of the Warden's – lamed by the war – occupied the attention of the little party.

Gwen's spirits rose at the sight of a really young man, but she remembered her mother's admonition and did not make any attempt to attract his attention beyond opening her eyes now and then suddenly and widely and with an ecstasy of interest at some invisible object just above his head. Whether the youthful warrior's imagination was excited by this "passage of arms" Gwen never knew, because the Warden took his pupil off to the library after dinner, and did not even bring him into the drawing-room to bid farewell.

In the quiet of the drawing-room Gwen fell into thought. She wondered whether the Warden expected her to come and knock on his library door and walk in and tell him that she really did want to be married to him? Or had he read that letter and – ? Why, she had thought all this over a hundred times, and was no farther on than she had been before.

After playing the Reverie by Slapovski, which Mrs. Dashwood had not yet heard, and which she expressed a desire to hear, Gwen settled down to knitting a sock. She had been knitting that sock for five months. It was surprising how small the foot was, at least the toe part; the heel indeed was ample. She had followed the directions with great care, and yet the stupid thing would come out wrong. It was irritating to see Mrs. Dashwood knitting away at such a pace. It made Gwen giddy to look at her hands. Lady Dashwood took up a book and read passages aloud. This was so intolerably dull that Gwen found it difficult to keep her eyes open. It is always more tiring when nothing is going on than when plenty of things are going on!

Lady Dashwood had just finished reading a passage and looked up to make a remark to May Dashwood, when she became aware of Gwen's face.

"My dear, you looked just like a melancholy peach. Go to bed!"

Gwen smiled and tumbled her pins into her knitting. She rose and said "Good night," glad to be released. Outside the drawing-room she stood holding her breath to hear if there was any sound audible from the library. She heard nothing. She moved over the soft carpet and listened again, at the door. She could hear the Warden's deep, masculine voice – like the vibration of an organ, and then a higher voice, but what they said Gwen could not tell. She turned away and went up to bed. She was beginning to lose that feeling of not being afraid of the Warden. He was becoming more and more what he had been at first, an impressive and alarming personage, a human being entirely remote from her understanding and experience. At moments during dinner when she had glanced at him, he had seemed to her to be like a handsomely carved figure animated by some living force completely unknown to her. That such an incomprehensible being should become her husband was surely unlikely – if not impossible! Gwen's thoughts became more and more confused. Notwithstanding this confusion in what (if compelled to describe it) she would have called her soul, she closed her eyes and settled upon her pillow. She was conscious that she was disappointed and not happy. Then she suddenly became indifferent to her fate – saw in her mind's eye a hat – it absorbed her. The hat was lying on a chair. It was trimmed like some other hat. Then the hat disappeared, and Gwen was asleep.

As soon as Gwendolen had left the drawing-room Lady Dashwood closed her book and looked at her niece.

"Now," said Lady Dashwood, "I begin to think that I was unnecessarily alarmed about Jim. But it may be because you are here – giving me moral support." Lady Dashwood spoke the words "moral support" with great firmness. Having once said it and seen that it was wrong, she meant to stick to it.

"I wonder," began Mrs. Dashwood, and then she remained silent and looked hard at her knitting.

Lady Dashwood still stared at her niece. But May did not conclude her sentence, if indeed she had meant to say any more.

"Why, you haven't noticed anything?" asked Lady Dashwood.

"Nothing!" said May, and she knitted on.

"To-day," said Lady Dashwood, "Jim has been practically invisible except at meals, but you've no idea how busy he is just now. All one's old ideas are in the melting-pot," she went on, "and Jim has schemes. He is full of plans. He thinks there is much to be done, in Oxford, with Oxford – nothing revolutionary – but a lot that is evolutionary."

Mrs. Dashwood dropped her knitting to listen, though she could have heard quite well without doing this.

"Imagine!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood, with a little burst of anger, "what a man like Jim, a scholar, a man of business, an organiser, what on earth he would do with a wife like Gwendolen Scott! The idea is absurd."

"The absurd often happens," said May, and as she said this she took up her knitting again with such a jerk that her ball of wool tumbled to the floor and began rolling; and being a tight ball it rolled some distance sideways from May's chair in the direction of the far distant door. She gave the wool a little tug, but the ball merely shook itself, turned over and released still more wool.

"Very well, remain there if you prefer that place," said May, and as she spoke there came a slight noise at the door.

Both ladies looked to see who was coming in. It was the Warden. He held a cigar in his hand, a sign (Lady Dashwood knew it) that he intended merely to bid them "Good night," and retire again to his library. But he now stood in the half-light with his hand on the door, and looked towards the glow of the hearth where the two ladies sat alone, each lighted by a tall, electric candle stand on the floor. And as he looked at this little space of light and warmth he hesitated.

Then he closed the door behind him and came in.

CHAPTER VI

MORE THAN ONE CONCLUSION

The Warden came slowly towards them over the wide space of carpeted floor.

Lady Dashwood, who knew every passing change in his face and manner (they were photographed over and over again in every imaginable style in her book of life), noticed that the sight of herself and May alone, that is, without Gwen – had made him decide to come in. She drew her own conclusions and smiled.

"When you pass that ball of wool, pick it up, Jim," she said.

She spoke too late, however, and the Warden kicked the ball with one foot, and sent it rolling under a chair. It took the opportunity of flinging itself round one leg, and tumbling against the second. With its remaining strength it rolled half way round the third leg, and then lay exhausted.

"I'm not going to apologise," said the Warden, in his most courteous tones.

"You needn't do that, my dear, if you don't want to," said Lady Dashwood. "But pick up the ball, please."

"If I pick the ball up," said the Warden, "the result will be disastrous to somebody."

He looked at the ball and at the chair, and then, putting his cigar between his teeth, he lifted the chair from the labyrinth of wool and placed it out of mischief. Then he picked up the ball and stood holding it in his hand. Who was the "somebody"? To whom did it belong? It was obvious to whom it belonged! A long line of wool dropped from the ball to the carpet. There it described a foolish pattern of its own, and then from one corner of that pattern the line of wool ran straight to Mrs. Dashwood's hands. She was sitting there, pretending that she didn't know that she was very, very slowly and deliberately jerking out the very vitals of that pattern, in fact disembowelling it. Then the Warden pretended to discover suddenly that it was Mrs. Dashwood's ball, and this discovery obliged him to look at her, and she, without glancing at him, slightly nodded her head, very gravely. Lady Dashwood grasped her book and pretended to read it.

"I suppose I must clear up this mess," said the Warden, as articulately as a man can who is holding a cigar between his teeth.

He began to wind up the ball.

"How beautifully you are winding it!" said May Dashwood, without looking up from her knitting.

The Warden cleared the pattern from the floor, and now a long line of wool stretched tautly from his hands to those of Mrs. Dashwood.

"Please stop winding," she said quietly, and still she did not look up, though she might have easily done so for she had left off knitting.

The Warden stopped, but he stood looking at her as if to challenge her eyes. Then, as she remained obstinately unmoved, he came towards her chair and dropped the ball on her lap.

"You couldn't know I was winding it beautifully because you never looked."

"I knew without looking," said May. "I took for granted that you did everything well."

"If you will look now," said the Warden, "you will see how crookedly I've done it. So much for flattery."

He stood looking down at her bent head with its gold-brown hair lit up to splendour by the electric light behind her. Her face was slightly in shadow. The Warden stood so long that Lady Dashwood was seized with an agreeable feeling of embarrassment. May Dashwood was apparently unconscious of the figure beside her. But she raised her eyebrows. Her eyebrows were often slightly raised as if inquiring into the state of the world with sympathy tinged with surprise. She raised her eyebrows instead of making any reply, as if she said: "I could make a retort, but I am far too busy with more important matters."

The Warden at last moved, and putting a chair between the two ladies he seated himself exactly opposite the glowing fire and the portrait above it. Leaning back, he smoked in silence for a few moments looking straight in front of him for the most part, only now and then turning his eyes to Mrs. Dashwood, just to find out if her eyebrows were still raised.

Lady Dashwood began smiling at her book because she had discovered that she held it upside down.

"You were interested in Stockwell?" said the Warden suddenly. "He is doing multifarious things now. He is an accomplished linguist, and we couldn't manage without him – besides he is over military age by a long way."

Lady Dashwood felt quite sure that his silence had been occupied by the Warden in thinking of May, so that his question, "You were interested," etc., was merely the point at which his thoughts broke into words.

"I was very much interested in him," said May. "It was like reading a witty book – only much more delightful."

"Stockwell is always worth listening to," said the Warden, "but he is sometimes very silent. He needs the right sort of audience to draw him out. Two or three congenial men – or one sympathetic woman." Here the Warden paused and looked away from May Dashwood, then he added: "I'm obliged to go to Cambridge to-morrow. You will be at Chartcote and you will get some amusement out of Boreham. You find everybody interesting?" He turned again and looked at her – this time so searchingly that a little colour rose in May Dashwood's cheek.

"Oh, not everybody," she said. "I wish I could!"

"My dear May," said Lady Dashwood, briskly seizing this brilliant opportunity of pointing the moral and adorning the tale, "even you can't pretend to be interested in little Gwendolen, though you have done your best. Now that you have seen something of her, what do you think of her?"

"Very pretty," said May Dashwood, and she became busy again with her work.

"Exactly," said Lady Dashwood. "If she were plain even Belinda would not have the impertinence to deposit her on people's doorsteps in the way she does."

The Warden took his cigar out of his mouth, as if he had suddenly remembered something that he had forgotten. He laid his hands on the arms of his chair and seemed about to rise.

"You're not going, Jim!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood. "I thought you had come to talk to us. We have been doing our duty since dawn of day, and this is May's little holiday, you know. Stop and talk nicely to us. Do cheer us up!" Her voice became appealing.

The Warden rose from his chair and stood with one hand resting on the back of it as if about to make some excuse for going away. Except for the glance, necessitated by courtesy, that May Dashwood gave the Warden when he entered, she had kept her eyes obstinately upon her work. Now she looked up and met his eyes, only for a moment.

"I'm not going," he said, "but I find the fire too hot. Excuse me if I move away. It has got muggy and warm – Oxford weather!"

"Open one of the windows," said Lady Dashwood. "I'm sure May and I shall be glad of it."

He moved away and walked slowly down the length of the room. Going behind the heavy curtains he opened a part of the casement and then drew aside one of the curtains slightly. Then he slowly came back to them in silence.

This silence that followed was embarrassing, so embarrassing that Lady Dashwood broke into it urgently with the first subject that she could think of. "Tell May about the Barber's ghost, Jim."