The New Warden Part 24

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 "pet.i.t dejeuner," 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. n.o.body, of course, had slept but Gwendolen, and Gwendolen had awakened from her sleep fresh and rosy.

It was only after several minutes had pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 compa.s.sionate 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.

Well into the early morning Lady Dashwood had lain awake thinking, and listening mechanically to the gentle breathing of the girl beside her, and thinking--thinking of May's strange exhibition of emotion. Was May----? No--that made things worse than ever--that made the irony of her brother's fate more acute! That was a tragic thought! But it was just this tragic thought that made Lady Dashwood now at the breakfast table observe with a subtle keenness of observation and yet without seeming to observe, or even to look. She sat there, absorbing May, absorbing the Warden, measuring them, weighing them while she tried to eat a piece of toast, biting it up as if she had pledged herself to reduce it to the minutest fragments.

"Perhaps I'm not fair to Mr. Boreham," said May, shaking her head. "But I am an ignoramus. How can one," she said smiling, but keeping her eyelids still downcast, "how can one combine the bathing of babies and feeding them, the dressing and undressing of them, the putting them to bed and getting them up again, with any culture (spelt with a 'c'). I get only a short and rather tired hour of leisure in the evening in which to read?"

"You do combine them," he said, still bending towards her with the same tense look. "Only one woman in a thousand would."

The colour had slightly risen in May's face, and now it died away, for she was aware that no sooner were the last words spoken than the Warden seemed to regret them. At least he stiffened himself and looked away from her, stared at nothing in particular and then put out his hand to take a piece of toast, making that simple action seem as if it were a protest of resolute indifference to her.

May felt as if his hand had struck her. She had partly succeeded in her effort and she had refused to glance at him. But she had not succeeded in thinking of something else, and now this simple movement of his hand made thoughts of him burn in her brain. Why did this man, with all his erudition, with his distinction, with all his force of character, his wide sympathies and his curious influence over others, why did this man with all his talk (and this she said bitterly) about life and death--and yes--about eternity, why did he bind himself hand and foot to a selfish and shallow girl? He who talked of life and of death, could he not stand the test of life himself?

The Warden rose from the table the moment that he had finished and looked at his sister. She had put her letters aside and appeared to have fallen into a heavy preoccupation with her own thoughts.

"Can I see you--afterwards--for a moment in the library, Lena?" he asked.

Lady Dashwood's tired face flushed.

"I will come very soon," she said, and she pushed her chair back a little, as if to cover her embarra.s.sment, and looked at her niece.

"May," she said, in a voice that did not quite conceal her trouble, "we ought to start at a quarter to ten. That will give us two clear hours for our work."

May bent her head in a.s.sent. Neither of them was thinking of the Club.

They could hear the Warden close the door behind him. Then Lady Dashwood rose and casting a silent look at May, went out of the room.

In the library a fitful sunshine was coming and going from a clouded sky. The curtains were drawn back and there seemed nothing in the room that could have justified even a hysterical girl in imagining a ghost.

The Warden had left the door open, for he heard his sister coming up the stairs behind him.

Lady Dashwood came in, and she began speaking at once to cover her apprehension of the interview. "A funny sort of a day," she began. "I hope it will keep up for this afternoon."

The Warden had gone to one of the windows, and he moved at the sound of her voice.

"Mrs. Harding," she said, "has written to ask us to come in to tea, as she's so near. It is convenient, as we shall only have to walk a few steps from our Sale, so I am going to accept by telephone."

The Warden came towards her, and taking a little case from his pocket, handed her some notes. "Will you spend that for me at your Sale?"

That was not his reason for the interview! Lady Dashwood took the notes and put them into her bag, and then waited a moment.