Watersprings Part 11

After luncheon it became clear that Jack had given up the afternoon as a bad job, and suggested that they should all go down to the river. The rowing man excused himself, and Howard followed his example, pleading occupation of a vague kind. Mr. Sandys was enchanted at the prospect, and they went off in the charge of Guthrie, who was free, promising to return and have tea in his rooms. Guthrie, who was a friend of Howard's, included him in the invitation, but Howard said that he could not promise, but would look in if he could.

As a matter of fact, he went out for a lonely walk, ashamed of himself for his stupidity. He could not put himself in the position, he dismally thought, of competing for Maud's attention.

He walked off round by Madingley, hardly aware of what road he was taking. By the little chalk-pit just outside the village a rustic pair, a boy and girl, stood sheepishly clasped in a dull and silent embrace.

Howard, to whom public exhibitions of emotion were distasteful, walked swiftly by with averted eyes, when suddenly a poignant thought came on him, causing him to redden up to the roots of his hair, and walk faster than ever. It was this, then, that was the matter with him--he was in love, he was jealous, he was the victim of the oldest, simplest, commonest, strongest emotion of humanity. His eyes were opened. How had he not seen it before? His broodings over the thought of Maud, the strange disturbance that came on him in her presence, that absurd desire to do or say something impressive, coupled with that wretched diffidence that kept him silent and helpless--it was love! He became half dizzy with the thought of what it all meant; and at the same instant, Maud seemed to recede from him as something impossibly pure, sweet, and unapproachable. All that notion of a paternal close friendship--how idiotic it was! He wanted her, at every moment, to share every thought with her, to claim every thought of hers, to see her, to clasp her close; and then at the same moment came the terrible disillusionment; how was he, a sober, elderly, stiff-minded professional person, to recommend himself? What was there in him that any girl could find even remotely attractive--his middle-aged habits, his decorous and conventional mind, his clumsy dress, his grizzled hair? He felt of himself that he was ravaged with age and decrepitude, and yet in his folly he had suggested this visit, and he had thrown the girl he loved out of her lonely life, craving for sympathy and interest, into a set of young men all apt for pa.s.sion and emotion. The thought of Guthrie with his charm, his wealth, his aplomb, fell cold on his heart. Howard's swift imagination pictured the mutual attraction of the two, the enchanting discoveries, the laughing sympathy. Guthrie would, no doubt, come down to Windlow. It was exactly the kind of match that Mr. Sandys would like for Maud; and this was to be the end of this tragic affair. How was he to endure the rest of the days of the visit?

This was Tuesday, and they were not to go till Sat.u.r.day; and he would have to watch the budding of a romance which would end in his choosing Maud a wedding-present, and attending at Windlow Church in the character of the middle-aged squire, beaming through his gla.s.ses on the young people.

In such abject reflections the walk pa.s.sed away. He crept into College by the side-entrance, settled down to his evening work with grim tenacity, and lost himself in desperate imaginings of all the pleasant things that might be happening to the party. They were to dine at a restaurant, he believed, and probably Guthrie would be free to join them.

Late that night Jack looked in. "Is anything the matter?" he said. "Why didn't you come to Guthrie's? Look here, you are going to play fair, aren't you? I can't do all the entertaining business myself. I really must have a day off to-morrow, and get some exercise."

"All right," said Howard, "I'll take them on. Suppose you bring them to luncheon here. And I will tell you what I will do. I will be responsible for to-morrow afternoon. Then on Thursday you shall come and dine here again; and on Friday I will try to get the Master to lunch--that will smooth things over a bit."

"Thanks very much," said Jack; "that's splendid! I wish we hadn't let ourselves in for quite so much. I'm not fit to lead a double life like this. I'm sure I don't grudge them their outing, but, by George, I shall be glad to see the last of them, and I daresay you will be too.

It's the hardest work I've had for a long time."

The two came and lunched with Howard. After luncheon he said, "Now, I am absolutely free to-day--Jack has got a lawn-tennis match on--what shall we do?"

"Well," said Mr. Sandys genially, "I will be entirely selfish for once.

I have come on the track of some very important matters in the Library, and I see they are going to take up my time. And then I am going in to have a cup of tea at Pembroke with the Dean, an old friend of mine.

There, I make no excuses! I did suggest to Herries that I had a daughter with me; but he rather pointedly didn't ask her. Women are not in his line, and he will like a quiet talk with me. Now, what do you say to that, Howard?"

"Well, if Miss Maud will put up with me," said Howard, "we will stroll about, and we might go to King's Chapel together. I should like to show her that, and we will go to see Monica Graves, and get some tea there."

"Give Monica my love," said Mr. Sandys, "and make what excuses you can.

Better tell her the truth for once! I will try to look in upon her before I go."

Maud a.s.sented very eagerly and gratefully. They walked together to the Library, and Mr. Sandys bolted in like a rabbit into its hole. Howard was alone with her.

She was very different, he thought, from what she had seemed that first night. She was alert, smiling, delighted with everything and everybody about the place. "I think it is all simply enchanting!" she said; "only it makes me long to go to Newnham. I think men do have a better time than women; and, what is more, no one here seems to have anything whatever to do!"

"That's only our unselfishness," said Howard. "We get no credit! Think of all the piles of papers that are acc.u.mulating on my table. The other day I entertained with all the virtue and self-sacrifice at my command a party of working-men from the East end of London at luncheon in my rooms, and took them round afterwards. They knew far more than I did about the place, and I cut a very poor figure. At the end the Secretary, meaning to be very kind to me, said that he was glad to have seen a glimpse of the cultured life. 'It is very beautiful and distinguished,' he added, 'but we of the democracy shall not allow it to continue. It is always said that the Dons have nothing to do but to read and sip their wine, and I am glad to see it all for myself. To think of all these endowments being used like this! Not but what we are very grateful to you for your kindness!'"

They strolled about. Cambridge is not a place that puts its characteristic beauties in the forefront. Some of the most charming things lurk unsuspected beyond dark entries and behind sombre walls.

They penetrated little mouldering courts; they looked into dim and stately halls and chapels; they stood long on the bridge of Clare, gazing at that incomparable front, with all the bowery gardens and willow-shaded walks, like Camelot, beside the slow, terraced stream.

It was a tortured kind of delight for Howard to feel the girl beside him; but she showed no wish to talk intimately or emotionally. She asked many questions, and he could see that she drank in eagerly the beauty of the place, understanding its charm in a moment. They went in to see Monica, who was in a mood of dry equanimity, and rallied Howard on the success of his visit to Windlow. "I hear you entered on the scene like a fairy prince," she said, "and charmed an estate out of Cousin Anne in the course of a few hours. Isn't he magnificent, Maud?

You mustn't think he is a typical Don: he is quite one of our brightest flowers."

"When am I to come again to Windlow?" she added; "I suppose I must ask Howard's leave now? He told me, you know," she said to Maud, "that he wanted a change--he was bored with his work; so I abandoned Aunt Anne to him; and he set up his flag in a moment. There are no diplomatists like these cultured and unworldly men, Maud! It was n.o.ble of me to do as I did. If I had exercised my persuasion on Aunt Anne, and kept Howard away, I believe she would have turned over Windlow to me, and I would have tried a social experiment there. It's just the place for an inebriate home; no public-houses, and plenty of fine spring water."

Maud was immensely amused by Monica. Howard contented himself by saying that he was much misinterpreted; and presently they went off to King's together.

Maud was not prepared for King's Chapel, and indeed the tame, rather clumsy exterior gives very little hint of the wonders within.

When they pa.s.sed the swing-door, and saw the fine soaring lines leading to the exquisite intricacies of the roof, the whole air full of rich colour; the dark carved screen, with the gleaming golden trumpets of the angels on the organ, Howard could see her catch her breath, and grow pale for an instant at the crowded splendour of the place.

They sat in the nave; and when the thin bell died down, and the footsteps pa.s.sed softly by, and the organ uttered its melodious voice as the white-robed procession moved slowly in, Howard could see that the girl was almost overcome by the scene. She looked at him once with a strange smile, a smile which he could not interpret; and as the service slowly proceeded--to Howard little more than a draught of sweet sensation--he could see that Maud was praying earnestly, deeply, for some consecration of hope and strength which he could not divine or guess at.

As they came away, she hardly spoke--she seemed tired and almost rapt out of herself. She just said, "Ah, I am glad I came here with you. I shall never forget this as long as I live--it is quite beyond words."

He took her back to the lodgings where they were staying. She shook hands with him, smiled faintly, almost tearfully, and went in without a word. Howard went back in a very agitated frame of mind. He did not understand what was in the girl's mind at all. She was different, utterly different. Some new current of thought had pa.s.sed through her mind. He fancied that the girl, after her secluded life, with so many richly perceptive faculties half starved, had awakened almost suddenly to a sense of the crowded energies and joys of life, that youth and delight had quickened in her; that she foresaw new relations, and guessed at wonderful secrets. But it troubled him to think that she had not seemed to wish to revive their former little intimacy; she had seemed half unconscious of his presence, and all alive with new pleasures and curiosities. The marvellous veil of s.e.x appeared to have fallen between them. He had made friends with her, as he would have made friends with some ingenuous boy; and now something wholly new, mysterious, and aloof had intervened.

The rest of the visit was uneventful enough. Maud was different--that was plain--not less delightful, indeed even more so, in her baffling freshness; but Howard felt removed from her, shut out from her mind, kept at arm's length, even superseded.

The luncheon with the Master as guest was a success. He was an old bachelor clergyman, white-haired, dainty, courteous, with the complexion of a child. He was very gracious to Mr. Sandys, who regarded him much as he might have regarded the ghost of Isaiah, as a spirit who visited the earth from some paradisiacal retreat, and brought with him a fragrance of heaven. The thought of a Doctor of Divinity, the Head of a College, full of academical learning, and yet perfectly courteous and accessible, filled Mr. Sandys' cup of romance to the brim. He seemed to be storing his memory with the Master's words. The Master was delighted with Maud, and treated her with a charming and indulgent gaiety, which Howard envied. He asked her opinion, he deferred to her, he made her come and sit next to him, he praised Jack and Howard, and at the end of the luncheon he filled Mr. Sandys with an almost insupportable delight by saying that the next time he could visit Cambridge he hoped he would stay at the Lodge--"but not unless you will promise to bring Miss Sandys as well--Miss Sandys is indispensable." Howard felt indeed grateful to the gallant and civil old man, who had so clear an eye for what was tender and beautiful. Even Jack, when the Master departed, was forced to say that he did not know that the old man had so much blood in him!

That night Mr. Sandys finished up his princely progress by dining in Hall with the Fellows, and going to the Combination Room afterwards. He was not voluble, as Howard had expected. He was overcome with deference, and seized with a desire to bow in all directions at the smallest civility. He sat next to the Vice-Master, and Mr. Redmayne treated him to an exhibition of the driest fireworks on record. Mr.

Sandys a.s.sented to everything, and the number of times that he exclaimed "True, true! admirably said!" exceeded belief. He said to Howard afterwards that the unmixed wine of intellect had proved a potent beverage. "One must drink it down," he said, "and trust to a.s.similating it later. It has been a glorious week for me, my dear Howard, thanks to you! Quite rejuvenating indeed! I carry away with me a precious treasure of thought--just a few notes of suggestive trains of inquiry have been scribbled down, to be dealt with at leisure. But it is the atmosphere, the rarefied atmosphere of high thought, which has braced and invigorated me. It has entirely obliterated from my mind that odious escapade of Jack's--so judiciously handled! The kindness of these eminent men, these intellectual giants, is profoundly touching and inspiring. I must not indeed hope to trespa.s.s on it unduly. Your Master--what a model of self-effacing courtesy--your Vice-Master--what a fine, rugged, uncompromising nature; and the rest of your colleagues"--with a wave of his hand--"what an impression of reserved and restrained force it all gives one! It will often sustain me," said the good Vicar in a burst of confidence, "in my simple labours, to think of all this tide of unaffected intellectual life ebbing and flowing so tranquilly and so systematically in old alma mater! The way in which you have laid yourself out to entertain me is indeed gratifying. If there is a thing I reverence it is intellect, especially when it is framed in modesty and courtesy."

Howard went with him to his lodgings, and just went in to say good-bye to Maud. Jack had been dining with her, but he was gone. He and Guthrie were going to the station to give them a send-off. "A charming young fellow, Guthrie!" said Mr. Sandys. "He has been constantly with us, and it is very pleasant to find that Jack has such an excellent friend. His father is, I believe, a man of wealth and influence? You would hardly have guessed it! That a young man of that sort should have given up so much time to entertaining a country parson and his daughter is really very gratifying--a sign of the growing humanity of the youth of England. I fear we should not have been so tolerant at dear old Pembroke. I like your young men, Howard. They are unduly careless, I think, about dress; but in courtesy and kindness, irreproachable!"

Howard only had a few words with Maud, of a very commonplace kind. She had enjoyed herself very much, and it was good of him to have given up so much time to them. She seemed to him reserved and preoccupied, and he could not do anything to restore the old sense of friendship. He was tired himself; it had been a week of great strain. Far from getting any nearer to Maud, he felt that he had drifted away from her, and that some intangible part.i.tion kept them apart. The visit, he felt, had been a mistake from beginning to end.

XVII

SELF-SUPPRESSION

As soon as the term was over, Howard went down to Windlow. He was in a very unhappy frame of mind. He could not capitulate; but the more that he thought, the more that he tried to a.n.a.lyse his feelings, the more complex they became. It really seemed to him at times as if two perfectly distinct people were arguing within him. He was afraid of love; his aim had always been to simplify his life as far as possible, and to live in a serene and cheerful spirit, for the day and in the day. His work, his relations with colleagues and pupils, had all amused and interested him; he had cared for people, he had many friends; but it was all a cool, temperate, unimpa.s.sioned kind of caring. People had drifted in and out of his life; with his frank and easy manner, his excellent memory for the characteristics and the circ.u.mstances of others, it had been easy for him to pick up a relationship where he had laid it down; but it was all a very untroubled business, and no one had ever really entered into his life; he did not like dropping people, and took some trouble by means of letters to keep up communication with his old pupils; but his friendships had never reached the point at which the loss of a friend would have been a severe blow. He felt that he was always given credit for more affection than he possessed, and this had made him careful not to fail in any duty of friendship. He was always ready to take trouble, to advise, to help his old pupils in their careers; but it had been done more from a sense of courtesy than from any deeper motive.

Now, however, it was very different; he felt himself wholly preoccupied by the thought of Maud; and he found himself looking into the secret of love, as a man might gaze from a hill-top into a chasm where the rocky ridges plunged into mist, doubting of his way, and mistrusting his own strength to pursue the journey. He did not know what the quality of his love was; he recognised an intense kind of pa.s.sion, but when he looked beyond that, and imagined himself wedded to Maud, what was the emotion that would survive the accomplishment of his desires? Would he find himself longing for the old, comfortable, isolated life again? did he wish his life to be inextricably intertwined with the life of another?

He was not sure. He had a dread of having to concede an absolute intimacy, he wished to give only as much as he chose; and then, too, he told himself that he was too old to marry so young a girl, and that she would be happier if she could find a more equal partner for her life.

Yet even so the thought of yielding her to another sickened him. He believed that she had been attracted by Guthrie, and that he had but to hold his hand and keep his distance, and the relation might broaden into marriage. He wondered if love could begin so, so easily and simply. He would like to have believed it could not, yet it was just so that love did begin! And then, too, he did not know what was the nature of Maud's feelings to himself. He thought that she had been attracted to him, but in a sisterly sort of way; that he had come across her when she was feeling cramped and dissatisfied, and that a friendship with him had seemed to offer her a chance of expansion and interest.

He often thought of telling the whole story to his aunt; but like many people who seem extraordinarily frank about their feelings and fancies, and speak easily even of their emotions, he found himself condemned to silence about any emotion or experience that had any serious or tragic quality. Most people would have thought him communicative, and even lacking in reticence. But he knew in himself that it was not so; he could speak of his intimate ideas very readily upon slight acquaintance, because they were not to him matters of deep feeling; but the moment that they really moved him, he felt absolutely dumb and tongue-tied.

He established himself at Windlow, and became at once aware that his aunt perceived that there was something amiss. She gave him opportunities of speaking to her, but he could not take them. He shrank with a painful dumbness from displaying his secret wound. It seemed to him undignified and humiliating to confess his weakness. He hoped vaguely that the situation would solve itself, and spare him the necessity of a confession.

He tried to occupy himself in his book, but in vain. Now that he was confronted with a real and urgent dilemma, the origins of religion seemed to him to have no meaning or interest. He did not feel that they had any bearing whatever upon life; and his pain seemed to infect all his perceptions. The quality of beauty in common things, the hill-shapes, the colour of field and wood, the lights of dawn and eve, the sailing cloud, the tints of weathered stone, the old house in its embowered garden, with the pure green lines of the down above, had no charm or significance for him any more. Again and again he said to himself, "How beautiful that would be, if I could but feel it to be so!" He saw, as clearly and critically as ever, the pleasant forms and hues and groupings of things, but it was dull and savourless, while all the attractive ideas that sprang up like flowers in his mind, the happy trains of thought, in which some single fancy ramified and extended itself into unsuspected combinations and connections, these all seemed hardly worth recognising or pursuing. He found himself listless and distracted, just able by an effort to talk, to listen, to exchange thoughts, but utterly without any zest or energy.

Jack had gone off for a short visit, and Howard was thus left mostly alone. He went once or twice to the Vicarage, but found Mr. Sandys an unmixed trial; there seemed something wholly puerile about his absurd energies and activities. The only boon of his society was that he expected no reply to his soliloquies. Maud was there too, a distant graceful figure; but she, too, seemed to have withdrawn into her own thoughts, and their talk was mostly formal. Yet he was painfully and acutely conscious of her presence. She, too, seemed to be clouded and sad. He found himself unable to talk to her unconstrainedly. He could only dumbly watch her; she appeared to avert her eyes from him; and yet he drew from these meetings an infinite series of pictures, which were as if engraved upon his brain. She became for him in these days like a lily drooping in a shadowed place and in a thunderous air; something fading away mutely and sorrowfully, like the old figure of Mariana in the Grange, looking wearily through listless hours for something which had once beckoned to her with a radiant gesture, but which did not return. There were brighter hours, when in the hot July days a little peace fell on him, a little sense of the fragrance and beauty of the world. He took to long and solitary walks on the down in search of bodily fatigue. There was one day in particular which he long remembered, when he had gone up to the camp, and sate in the shade of the thicket on the crisp turf, looking out over the valley, unutterably quiet and peaceful in the hot air. The trees were breathlessly still; the hamlet roofs peeped out above the orchards, the hot air quivered on the down. There were little figures far below moving about the fields.

It all looked lost in a sweetness of serene repose; and the thoughts that had troubled him rose with a bitter poignancy, that was almost a physical pain. The contrast between the high summer, the rich life of herb and tree, and his own weary and arid thoughts, fell on him like a flash. Would it not be better to die, to close one's eyes upon it all, to sink into silence, than thus to register the awful conflict of will and pa.s.sion with the tranquil life that could not surrender its dreams of peace? What did he need and desire? He could not tell; he felt almost a hatred of the slender, quiet girl, with her sweet look, her delicate hands, her noiseless movements. She had made no claim, she did not come in radiant triumph, with impressive gestures and strong commanding influences into his life; she had not even cried out pa.s.sionately, demanded love, displayed an urgent need; there had been nothing either tragic or imperious, nothing that called for instant solution; she was just a girl, sweet, wayward, anxious-minded, living a trivial, simple, sheltered life. What had given her this awful power over him, which seemed to have rent and shattered all his tranquil contentment, and yet had offered no splendid opportunity, claimed no all-absorbing devotion, no magnificent sacrifice? It was a sort of monstrous spell, a magical enchantment, which had thus made havoc of all his plans and gentle schemes. Life, he felt, could never be the same for him again; he was in the grip of a power that made light of human arrangements. The old books were full of it; they had spoken of some hectic mystery, that seized upon warriors and sages alike, wasted their strength, broke their energies, led them into crime and sorrow.

He had always rather despised the pale and hollow-eyed lovers of the old songs, and thought of them as he might think of men indulging in a baneful drug which filched away all manful prowess and vigour. It was like La Belle Dame sans merci after all, the slender faring child, whose kiss in the dim grotto had left the warrior 'alone and palely loitering,' burdened with sad thoughts in the wintry land. And yet he could not withstand it. He could see the reasonable and sensible course, a placid friendship, a long life full of small duties and quiet labours;--and then the thought of Maud would come across him, with her shining hair, her clear eyes, holding a book, as he had seen her last in the Vicarage, in her delicate hands, and looking out into the garden with that troubled inscrutable look; and all the prudent considerations fell and tumbled together like a house of cards, and he felt as though he must go straight to her and fall before her, and ask her to give him a gift the very nature of which he did not know, her girlish self, her lightly-ranging mind, her tiny cares and anxieties, her virginal heart--for what purpose? he did not know; just to be with her, to clasp her close, to hear her voice, to look into her eyes, to discourse with her some hidden secret of love. A faint sense of some infinite beauty and nearness came over him which, if he could win it, would put the whole of life into a different plane. Not a friendly combination, but an absolute openness and nakedness of soul, nothing hidden, nothing kept back, everything confessed and admitted, a pa.s.sing of two streams of life into one.

XVIII

THE PICNIC

Jack arrived at Windlow in due course, and brought with him Guthrie to stay. Howard thought, and was ashamed of thinking, that Jack had some scheme on foot; and the arrival of Guthrie was embarra.s.sing to him, as likely to complicate an already too complicated situation.