The New Warden Part 16

Boreham gazed after them with his beard at a saturnine angle. "You couldn't expect her to remember everything," he muttered to himself.

The sky was low, heavy and grey, and the air was chilly and yet close, and everything--sky, half-leafless trees, the gravelled drive too--seemed to be steaming with moisture. The words came to Boreham's mind:

"My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves, At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves."

"That won't do," he said to himself, as he still stood on the steps motionless. "It's no use quoting from Victorian poets. 'What the people want' is nothing older than Masefield or Noyes, or Verhaeren. Because, though Verhaeren's old enough, they didn't know about him till just now, and so he seems new; then there are all the new small chaps. No, I can't finish that article. After all, what does it matter? They must wait, and I can afford now to say, 'Take it or leave it, and go to the Devil!'"

He turned and went up the steps. There was no sound audible except the noise Boreham was making with his own feet on the strip of marble that met the parquetted floor of the hall. "It's a beastly distance from Oxford," he said, half aloud; "one can't just drop in on people in the evening, and who else is there? I'm not going to waste my life on half a dozen d.a.m.ned sport-ridden, parson-ridden neighbours who can barely spell out a printed book."

One thing had become clear in Boreham's mind. Either he must marry May Dashwood for love, or he must try and let Chartcote, taking rooms in Oxford and a flat in town.

If Boreham had found the morning unprofitable, the Hardings had not found it less so.

"Did Mrs. Potten propose calling?" asked Harding of his wife, as they sat side by side, rolling over a greasy road towards Oxford.

"No," said Mrs. Harding.

"It's quite clear to me," said Harding, "that Mrs. G. P. only regards Boreham as a freak, so that _he_ won't be any use."

"We needn't go there again," said Mrs. Harding, "unless, of course," she added thoughtfully, "we knew beforehand--somehow--that it wasn't just an Oxford party. And Lady Dashwood won't do anything for us."

"It's not been worth the taxi," said Harding.

"I wish you'd not made that mistake about Miss Scott," said Mrs.

Harding, after a moment's silence.

"How could I help it?" blurted Harding. "Scott's a common name. How on earth could I tell--and coming from Oxford!"

"Yes, but you could see she powdered, and her dress! Besides, coming with the Dashwoods and knowing Mrs. Potten!" continued Mrs. Harding. "If only you had said one or two sentences to her; I saw she was offended.

That's why she ran off with Mrs. Dashwood, she wouldn't be left to your tender mercies. I saw Lady Dashwood staring."

Harding made no answer, he merely blew through his pursed-up mouth.

"And we've got Boreham dining with us next Thursday!" he said after a pause. "d.a.m.n it all!"

"No. I didn't leave the note," said Mrs. Harding. "I thought I'd 'wait and see.'"

"Good!" said Harding.

"It was a nuisance," said Mrs. Harding, "that we asked the Warden of King's when the Bishop was here and got a refusal. We can't ask the Dashwoods and Miss Scott even quietly. It's for the Warden to ask us."

"Anyhow ask Bingham," said Harding; "just casually."

Mrs. Harding looked surprised. "Why, I thought you couldn't stick him,"

she said; "and he hasn't been near us for a couple of years at least."

"Yes, but----"

"Very well," said Mrs. Harding. "And meanwhile I've got Lady Dashwood to lend me Miss Scott for our Sale to-morrow! And shall I ask them to tea?

We are so near that it would seem the natural thing to do."

CHAPTER X

PARENTAL EFFUSIONS

"Well, May," said Lady Dashwood, leaning back into her corner and speaking in a voice of satisfaction, "we've done our duty, I hope, and now, if you don't mind, we'll go on doing our duty and pay some calls. I ought to call at St. John's and Wadham, and also go into the suburbs.

I've asked Mr. Bingham to dinner--just by ourselves, of course. Do you know what his nickname is in Oxford?"

May did not know.

"It is: 'It depends on what you mean,'" said Lady Dashwood.

"Oh!" said May. "Yes, in the Socratic manner."

"I dare say," said Lady Dashwood. "What did you think of the Hardings?"

May said she didn't know.

"They are a type one finds everywhere," said Lady Dashwood.

The afternoon pa.s.sed slowly away. It was the busy desolation of the city, a willing sacrifice to the needs of war, that made both May and Lady Dashwood sit so silently as they went first to Wadham, and then, round through the n.o.ble wide expanse of Market Square opposite St.

John's. Then later on out into the interminable stretch of villas beyond. By the time they returned to the Lodgings the grey afternoon light had faded into darkness.

"Any letters?" asked Lady Dashwood, as Robinson relieved them of their wraps.

Yes, there were letters awaiting them, and they had been put on the table in the middle of the hall; there was a wire also. The wire was from the Warden, saying that he would not be back to dinner.

"He's coming later," said Lady Dashwood, aloud. "Late, May!"

"Oh!" said May Dashwood.

There was a letter for Gwen. It was lying by itself and addressed in her mother's handwriting. She laid her hand upon it and hurried up to her room.

Lady Dashwood went upstairs slowly to the drawing-room. "H'm, one from Belinda," she said to herself, "asking me to keep Gwen longer, I suppose, on some absurd excuse! Well, I won't do it; she shall go on Monday."

She turned up the electric light and seated herself on a couch at one side of the fire. She glanced through the other letters, leaving the one from Belinda to the last.

"Now, what does the creature want?" she said aloud, and at the sound of her own voice, she glanced round the room. She had taken for granted that May had been following behind her and had sat down, somewhere, absorbed in her letters. There was no one in the room and the door was closed. She opened the letter and began to read:

"My dear Lena,

"I am a bit taken by surprise at Gwen's news! How rapidly it must have happened! But I have no right to complain, for it sounds just like a real old-fashioned love at first sight affair, and I can tell by Gwen's letter that she knows her own mind and has taken a step that will bring her happiness. Well, I suppose there is nothing that a mother can do--in such a case--but to be submissive and very sweet about it!"