The New Warden Part 21

The Warden very likely hadn't yet returned. She would try and find out.

She slipped quietly down the steps, and with her feet on the thick carpeted landing she waited. She could see that the hall below was brightly lighted, and all was still. She listened intently outside the drawing-room door. Not a sound. She might have time--if he really hadn't arrived.

She fled across the head of the staircase and was at the door of the library in a second of time. There she paused. No, there was no sound behind her! No one was coming upstairs! No one was opening the front door or moving in the hall! But it was just possible that he had already arrived and was sitting in the library. He might be sitting there--and looking severe! That would be alarming! Though--and here Gwen suddenly decided that for all his severity she infinitely preferred his appearance to that of a man like Mr. Boreham--Mr. Boreham's beard was surely the limit! She listened at the door. She laid her cheek against it and listened. No sound! The whole house illuminated and yet silent!

There was something strange about it! She would peep in and if there was no light within--except, of course, firelight--she would know instantly that the Warden wasn't there. It would only take her a flash of a minute to run in, throw the letter down on the desk, and fly for all she was worth.

She turned the handle of the door slowly and noiselessly, and pushed ever so little. The door opened just an inch or two and disclosed--darkness! Except for a glimmer--just a faint glimmer of light!

He could not have come in, he could not possibly be there, and yet Gwen had a curious impression that the room was not empty. But empty it must be. She pushed the door quietly open and peeped in. The fire was burning on the hearth in solemn silence, a cavernous red. There was n.o.body in the room, and yet, as Gwen stole in and pa.s.sed the projecting book-case opposite the door, against which she had stumbled that evening of evenings, she felt that she was not alone. It was a strange unpleasant feeling. There she was standing in the full s.p.a.ce of that shadowy room.

Books, books were everywhere--books that seemed to her keeping secrets in their pages and purposely not saying anything. The room was too long, too full of dead things--like books--too full of shadows. The heavy curtains looked black, the desk, its chair standing with its back to the fire--had a look of expecting to be occupied and waiting. She would have liked to have thrown the letter on to the desk instead of having to cross the few feet that separated her from the desk. The silence of the room was alarming! Something seemed to be ready to jump at her! Was something in the room? Gwen made a dash for the desk and threw down the letter. As she did so, a sudden thrill pa.s.sed up her spine and stiffened her hair. She was _not_ alone! There _was_ somebody in the room, a shadow, an outline, at the far end of the room against one of the curtains--a man, a strange figure, looking straight at her! He was standing, bending forward but motionless against the curtain, and staring with eyes that had no life in them--at her!

Gwen gave a piercing scream and rushed blindly for the door. She dashed against the projecting book-case, striking her head with some violence.

She tried to cry for help, but could not, the room swam in her vision.

She struck out her arms to s.h.i.+eld herself, and as she did so she felt rather than heard some one coming to her rescue, some one who flashed on the lights--and she flung herself into protecting arms.

"It's all right, it's all right," said the Warden. "What made you cry out? Don't be frightened, child!" and he half led, half carried her towards a chair near the fire.

"No, no!" sobbed Gwen, shrilly. "Not here--no, take me away--away from----"

"From what?" asked Lady Dashwood quietly, at her elbow. "What is the matter, Gwen? You mustn't scream for nothing--what has frightened you?"

Gwen groaned aloud and hid her face in the Warden's arm.

"Something in this room has frightened you?" he asked.

Gwen sobbed a.s.sent.

"There is nothing in this room," said Lady Dashwood. "Put her on the chair, Jim. She must tell us what it is she is afraid of. Come, Gwen!"

Although Gwendolen submitted to the commanding voice of Lady Dashwood and allowed herself to be placed in the chair, she still grasped the Warden's arm and hid her face in it.

"What frightened you, Gwen?" asked Lady Dashwood. "No harm can come to you--we are by you. Pull yourself together and speak plainly and quietly."

Gwen uttered some half-incoherent sounds--one only being intelligible to the two who were bending over her.

"A man!" said the Warden, glancing round with surprise.

"No man is in the room," said Lady Dashwood. "Did he go out? Did you see him go out?"

Gwen raised her face slightly.

"No. At the end there--looking!" and again she burst into uncontrollable sobs.

The Warden released his arm and walked to the farther end of the room, and Gwen grasped Lady Dashwood's arm and clung to her. The two women could hear the Warden as he walked across to the farther end of the room.

Gwen dared not look, but Lady Dashwood turned her head, supporting the girl's head as she did so on her shoulder.

The Warden had reached the window. He opened the curtains and looked behind them, then he pulled one sharply back, and into the lighted room came a flood of pale moonlight, and through the chequered window panes could be seen the moon herself riding full above a slowly drifting ma.s.s of cloud.

"There is nothing in the room. If there were we should see it," said Lady Dashwood quietly, and she turned the girl's face towards the moonlight. "Look for yourself, Gwen. Your fears are quite foolish, my dear, and you must try and control them."

So peremptory was Lady Dashwood's voice that the girl, still resting her head on the protecting shoulder, slightly opened her eyelids and saw the moonlight, the drawn curtains and the Warden standing looking back at them.

"You can see for yourself that there is nothing here," he said.

It was true, there was nothing there--there wasn't _now_: and for the first time Gwen was conscious of pain in her head and put up her hand.

There was a lump where she had knocked it, the lump was sore.

"Why, you have hurt your head, Gwen," said Lady Dashwood. "That explains everything. A blow on the head is just the thing to make you think you see something that isn't there! Come now, we'll go upstairs and put something on that bruised head, and make it well again."

"I struck my head after I saw _it_," said Gwen, laying a stress upon the word "it," averting her eyes from the moonlight and rising with the help of Lady Dashwood.

"You may have thought so," said Lady Dashwood. "Come we mustn't stop here. Dr. Middleton probably has letters to write. Jim, good night. I'm sorry you have been so much disturbed, after a hard day's work."

The tone in which Lady Dashwood made her last remark and her manner in leading Gwendolen out of the library, was that of a person who has "closed" a correspondence, terminated an interview. The affair of the scream and fright was over. It was a perfectly unnecessary incident to have occurred in a sane working day, so she had apologised for its intrusion. Why Gwendolen was in the library at all was a question that was of no consequence. It certainly was not in search of a book on which to spend the midnight oil. She _was_ there--that was all.

When they had gone, the Warden stood for some moments in the library pondering. He had shut the door. The curtains he had forgotten to pull back, and now he discovered his omission and went to the farther end of the room.

The opposite wall, the wall of the court, was just tipped with silver.

Distant spires and gables were silver grey. The clouds were drifting over the city westwards, and as the moon rode higher and higher in the southern sky, so the clouds sped faster before it, and behind it lay clear unfathomable s.p.a.ces in the east.

The Warden pulled the heavy curtain across the window again, and walked to the fireplace. Outside was the infinite universe--its immensity awful to contemplate! Inside was the narrow security of the lighted room in which he worked and thought and would work and think--for a few years!

For a few years?

How did he know that he should have even a few years in which to think and work for his College?

The Warden went to the fire and stood looking down into it, his hands clasped behind his back.

The girl he was pledged to marry, if she wished to marry him, might wreck his life! She had only just a few moments ago showed signs of being weakly hysterical. "Helpful to the College!" His sister's question had filled him with a sudden new ominous thought.

What about the College? He had forgotten his duty to the College!

"My marriage is my own concern," he was blurting out to himself miserably, as he looked at the fire. But the inevitable answer was already drumming in his ears--his own answer: "A man's action is not his own concern, and so deeply is every man involved in the life of the community in which he lives, that even his thoughts are not his own concern."

The Warden paced up and down.

There were letters lying on his desk unopened, unread. He would not attempt to answer any of them to-night. He could not attend to them, while these words were beating in his brain: "Do you think she will be helpful to the College?"

His College! More to him than anything else, more than his duty; his hope, his pride! And the College meant also the sacred memory of those who had fallen in the war, all the glorious hopeful youth that had sacrificed itself! And he had forgotten the College!

He dared not think any longer. He must wrestle with his thoughts. He must force them aside and wait, till the moment came when he must act.

That moment might not come! Possibly it might not! He would go to bed and try and sleep. He must not let thoughts so bitter and so deadly overwhelm him, eating into the substance of his brain, where they could breed and batten on the finest tissues and breed again.

He was looking at his desk and saw that one letter had tumbled from it on to the floor by his chair. He went across and picked it up. It was addressed in a big straggling hand--and had not come by post. He tore it open. It was from Gwendolen Scott. This was why she had come into the library. Without moving from the position where he stood he read it through.