The New Warden Part 11

"My poor Louise?" she said. "You never will understand English people.

If Mrs. Dashwood and the Warden are behind the window curtains, it is because they want to look out of the window!"

Louise's face became pa.s.sionately sceptical.

"In the rain, Madame!" she remarked. "In a darkness of the tomb?"

"Yes, in the rain and darkness," said Lady Dashwood. "You must go down again in a moment, and give them my message!"

CHAPTER VII

MEN MARCHING PAST

After the Warden had closed the door on his sister he came back to the fireplace. He had been interrupted, and he stood silently with his hand on the back of the chair, just as he had stood before. He was waiting, perhaps, for an invitation to speak; for some sign from Mrs. Dashwood that now that they were alone together, she expected him to talk on, freely.

She had no suspicion of the real reason why her Aunt Lena had gone away.

May took for granted that she had fled at the first sign of a religious discussion. May knew that General Sir John Dashwood, like many well regulated persons, was under the impression that he had, at some proper moment in his juvenile existence now forgotten, at his mother's knee or in his ancestral cradle, once and for all weighed, considered and accepted the sacred truths containing the Christian religion, and that therefore there was no need to poke about among them and distrust them.

Lady Dashwood had encouraged that sentiment of silent loyalty: it left more time and energy over for the discussion and arrangement of the practical affairs of life. May knew all this.

May, sitting by the fire, with her eyes on her work, observed the hesitation in the Warden's mind. She knew that he was waiting. She glanced up.

"What was it you were saying?" she asked in the softest of voices, for now that they were alone there was no one to be annoyed by a religious discussion.

The Warden moved round and seated himself. But even then he could not bring his thoughts to the surface: they lay in the back of his mind urgent, yet reluctant. Meanwhile he began talking about the portrait again. It served as a stalking horse. He told her some of the old college stories, stories not only of Langley, but of other Wardens in the tempestuous days of the Reformation and of the Civil War.

"And yet," he said suddenly, "what were those days compared with these?

Has there been any tragedy like this?" He gazed at her now; with his narrow eyes strained and sad.

"Just at the beginning of the war," he said, "I heard---- It was one hot brilliant morning in that early September. It was only a pa.s.sing sound--but I shall never forget it, till I die."

May Dashwood's hands dropped to her lap, and she sat listening with her eyes lowered.

"There was a sound of the feet of men marching past, though I could not see them. Their feet were trampling the ground rhythmically, and all to the 'playing' of a bugler. I have never heard, before or since, a bugle played like that! The youth--I could picture him in my mind--blew from his bugle strangely ardent, compelling notes. It was simple, monotonous music, but there came from the bugler's own soul a magnificent courage and buoyancy; and the trampling feet responded--responded to the light springing notes, the high ardour and gay fearlessness of youth. There was such hope, such joy in the call of duty! No thought of danger, no thought of suffering! All hearts leapt to the sounds! And the bugler pa.s.sed and the trampling feet! I could hear the swift, high, pa.s.sionate notes die in the distance; and I knew that the flower of our youth was marching to its doom."

The Warden got up from his chair, and walked away, and there was silence in the room.

Then he came up to where May sat and looked down at her.

"The High G.o.ds," she said, quietly quoting his own phrase, "wanted them."

He moved away again. "I have no argument for my faith," he said. "The question for us is no longer 'I must believe,' but 'Dare I believe?' The old days of certainty have gone. Inquisitions, Solemn Leagues and Covenants have gone--never to return. All the clamour of men who claim 'to know' has died down."

And as he gazed at her with eyes that demanded an answer she said simply: "I am content with the silence of G.o.d."

He made no answer and leaned heavily on the back of his chair. A moment later he began to walk again. "I don't think I _can_ believe that the heroic sacrifice of youth, their bitter suffering, will be mixed up indistinguishably with the cunning meanness of pleasure-seekers, with the sordid humbug of money-makers--in one vast forgotten grave. No, I can't believe that--because the world we know is a rational world."

May glanced round at him as he moved about. The great dimly-lit room was full of shadows, and Middleton's face was dark, full of shadows too, shadows of mental suffering. She looked back at her work and sighed.

"Even if we straighten the crooked ways of life, so that there are no more starving children, no men and women broken with the struggle of life: even if we are able, by self-restraint, by greater scientific knowledge to rid the earth of those diseases that mean martyrdom to its victims; even if hate is turned to love, and vice and moral misery are banished: even if the Kingdom of Heaven does come upon this earth--even then! That will not be a Kingdom of Heaven that is Eternal! This Earth will, in time, die. This Earth will die, that we know; and with it must vanish for ever even the memory of a million years of human effort.

Shall we be content with that? I fail to conceive it as rational, and therefore I cling to the _hope_ of some sort of life beyond the grave--Eternal Life. But," and here he spoke out emphatically, "I have no argument for my belief."

He came and stood close beside her now, and looked down at her. "I have no argument for my belief," he repeated.

"And you are content with the silence of G.o.d," he added. Then he spoke very slowly: "I must be content."

If he had stretched out his hand to touch hers, it would not have meant any more than did the prolonged gaze of his eyes.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked--its voice alone striking into the silence. It seemed to tick sometimes more loudly, sometimes more softly.

The Warden appeared to force himself away from his own thoughts. With his hands still grasping the back of his chair, he raised his head and stood upright. The tick of the clock fell upon his ear; a monotonous and mechanical sound--indifferent to human life and yet weighted with importance to human life; marking the moments as they pa.s.sed; moments never to be recalled; steps that are leading irretrievably the human race to their far-off destiny.

As the Warden's eyes watched the hands of the clock, they pointed to five minutes to eleven. A thought came to him.

"All the bells are silent now," he said, "except in the safe daylight."

May looked up at him.

"Even 'Tom' is silent. The Clusius is not tolled now."

He got up and walked along the room to the open window. There he held the curtain well aside and looked back at her. Why it was, May did not know, but it seemed imperative to her to come to him. She put her work aside and came through into the broad embrasure of the bay. Then he let the curtain fall and they stood together in the darkness. The Warden pushed out the latticed frame wider into the dark night. The air was scarcely stirring, it came in warm and damp against their faces.

The quadrangle below them was dimly visible. Eastwards the sky was heavy with a great blank pale s.p.a.ce stretching over the battlemented roof and full of the light of a moon that had just risen, but overhead a heavy cloud slowly moved westwards.

They both leaned out and breathed the night air.

"It will rain in a moment," said the Warden.

"In the old days," he said, "there would have been sounds coming from these windows. There would have been men coming light-heartedly from these staircases and crossing to one another. Now all is under military rule: the poor remnant left of undergraduate life--poor mentally and physically--this poor remnant counts for nothing. All that is best has gone, gone voluntarily, eagerly, and the men who fill their places are training for the Great Sacrifice. It's the most glorious and the most terrible thing imaginable!"

May leaned down lower and the silence of the night seemed oppressive when the Warden ceased speaking.

After a moment he said, "In the old days you would have heard some far-off clock strike the hour, probably a thin, cracked voice, and then it would have been followed by other voices. You would have heard them jangle together, and then into their discordance you would have heard the deep voice of 'Tom' breaking."

"But he is at his best," went on the Warden, "when he tolls the Clusius.

It is his right to toll it, and his alone. He speaks one hundred and one times, slowly, solemnly and with authority, and then all the gates in Oxford are closed."

Drops of rain fell lightly in at them, and May drew in her head.

"Oxford has become a city of memories to me," said the Warden, and he put out his arm to draw in the window.

"That is only when you are sad," said May.

"Yes," said the Warden slowly, "it is only when I give way to gloom.

After all, this is a great time, it can be made a great time. If only all men and women realised that it might be the beginning of the 'Second Coming.' As it is, the chance may slip."