The New Warden Part 23

The room was not s.p.a.cious, and the canopied bedstead looked too ma.s.sive for the room. It had stood there through the reign of four of the Wardens, and Lady Dashwood had kept it religiously. Gwen was propped up on pillows at one side of it, looking out of her luminous eyes with great self-pity. Her dark hair was disordered. She glanced round tearfully and apprehensively. An acute observer might have detected that her alarm was a little over expressed: she had three spectators--and one of them was the Warden!

Near her stood May Dashwood in a black dressing-gown illumined by her auburn hair. It was tied behind at her neck and spread on each side and down her back in glistening ma.s.ses. She looked like some priestess of an ancient cult, ministering to a soul distressed. The Warden stood for a moment arrested, looking across at them, and then his eyes rested on May alone.

Gwen made a curious movement into her pillows and May moved away from the bed. She seemed about to slip away from the room, but Lady Dashwood made her a sign to stay. It was such an imperative sign that May stayed.

She went to the fireplace silently and stood there, and Lady Dashwood came to her. No one spoke. Lady Dashwood stood with face averted from the bed and closed her eyes, like one who waits patiently, but takes no part and no responsibility. May did not look at the bed, but she heard what was said and saw, without looking.

The Warden was now walking quietly round to the side where Gwendolen was propped. She made a convulsive movement of her arms towards him and sobbed hysterically--

"Oh, I'm so frightened!"

He approached her without responding either to her exclamation or her gestures. He put his hand on the electric lamp by the bed, raised the shade, and turned it so as to cast its light on his own face. While he did this there was silence.

Then he began to speak, and the sound of his voice made May's heart stir strangely. She leaned her elbow on the mantelpiece and pressed her hand over her eyes. All her prayers that night, all her self-reproach, meant very little. What were they but a pretence, a cloak to hide from herself the nakedness of her soul? No, they were not a pretence. Her prayer had been a real prayer for forgetfulness of herself. But in his presence the past seemed to slip away and leave her clamouring for relief from this strange present suffering, and from this dull empty aching below her heart when she drew her breath. She knew now how weak she was.

She could hear his voice saying: "What is it you are afraid of?" and as he spoke, it seemed to May herself that fear, of all things in the world, was the least real, and fear of spirits was an amazing folly.

"I thought I saw something," said Gwendolen, doubtfully; for already she was under the influence of his voice, his manner, his face; and her mind had begun to relax the tenacity of its hold on that one distracting fear.

"You thought you saw something," he said, emphasising the word "thought"; "you made a mistake. You saw nothing--you imagined you saw--there _was_ nothing!"

May could not hear whether Gwendolen made any reply.

"And now I am going to prevent you from frightening yourself by imagining such foolish things again."

Although she did not look towards them, but kept her eyes on the ground, May was aware that the Warden was now bending over the bed, and he was speaking in an inaudible voice. She could hear the girl move round on the pillow in obedience to some direction of his. After this there came a brief silence between them that seemed an age of intolerable misery to May, and then she perceived that the Warden was turning out the bed light, and she heard him move away from the bed. He walked to the door very quietly, as if to avoid awakening a sleeper.

"Good night," he said in a low voice, and then, without turning towards them, he went out of the room.

The door was closed. The two women moved, looked at each other, and then glanced at the bed. Gwen was lying still; she had slid down low on her pillows, with her face towards the windows and her eyes closed. They stood motionless and intent, till they could see in the dim light that the girl was breathing quietly and slowly in sleep. Then Lady Dashwood spoke in a whisper.

"Now, I suppose, I can go to bed!"

Then she looked round at May. "Go to bed, May! You look worn out."

"Shall you sleep?" whispered May Dashwood, but she spoke as if she wasn't listening for an answer.

"I don't know," said Lady Dashwood, in a whisper too. "It's so like life. The person who has made all the fuss is comfortably asleep, and we who have had to endure the fuss, we who are worn out with it, are awake and probably won't sleep."

May moved towards the door and her aunt followed her. When May opened the door and went outside, Lady Dashwood did not close the door or say good night. She stood for a moment undecided, and then came outside herself and pulled the door to softly behind her.

"May!" she said, and she laid a detaining hand on her niece's arm.

"What, Aunt Lena?"

"If he liked, he could repel her, make her dislike him! If he liked he could make her refuse to marry him! You understand what I mean? He must know this now. The idea will be in his mind. He'll think it over. But I've no hope. He won't act on it. He'll only think of it as a temptation that he must put aside."

May did not answer.

"He could," said Lady Dashwood; "but he won't. He thinks himself pledged. And he isn't even in love with her. He isn't even infatuated for the moment!"

"You can't be sure."

"I am sure," said Lady Dashwood.

"How?" And now May turned back and listened for an answer with downcast eyes.

"I asked him a question--which he refused to answer. If he were in love he would have answered it eagerly. Why, he would have forced me to listen to it."

May Dashwood moved away from her aunt. "Still--they are engaged," she said. "They are engaged--that is settled."

Lady Dashwood spoke in a low, detaining voice. "Wait, May! Somehow she has got hold of him--somehow. Often the weak victimise the strong. Those who clamour for what they want, get it. Every day the wise are sacrificed to fools. I know it, and yet I sleep in peace. But when Jim is to be sacrificed--I can't sleep. I am like a withered leaf, blown by the wind."

May took her aunt's arm and laid her cheek against her shoulder.

"How can I sleep," said Lady Dashwood, "when I think of him, worried into the grave by petty anxieties, by the daily fretting of an irresponsible wife, by the hopeless daily task of trying to make something honourable and worthy--out of Belinda and Co.? When I say Belinda and Co., I think not merely of Belinda Scott and her child, but of all that Jim hates: the whole crew of noisy pleasure-hunters that float upon the surface of our social life. The time may come when we shall say to our social parasites, 'Take up your burden of life and work!' The time _will_ come! But meanwhile Jim has to be sacrificed because he is hopelessly just. And yet I wouldn't have him otherwise.

Go, dear, try and sleep, for all my talk." Then, as she drew away from her niece, she said in a tense whisper: "What an unforgivable fool he has been!"

May closed her eyes intently and said nothing.

"Oh, May," sighed Lady Dashwood, "forgive me; I feel so bitter that I could speak against G.o.d."

May looked up and laid her hand on her aunt's arm.

"You know those lines, Aunt Lena--

"Measure thy life by loss and not by gain, Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth!"

Lady Dashwood's eyes flashed. "If Jim had offered his life for England I could say that: but are we to pour forth wine to Belinda and Co.?"

The two women looked at each other; stared, silently.

Then Lady Dashwood began to turn the handle of the door.

"Why should he be sacrificed to--to--futilities?" Then she added very softly: "I have had no son of my own, May, so Jim fills the vacant place. I think I could, like Abraham, have sacrificed my son to the Great G.o.d of my nation, but this sacrifice! Oh, May, it's so silly! He might have married some nice, quiet Oxford girl any day. And he has waited for this!"

She saw the pain in May's eyes and added: "I am wearing you out with my talk. I am getting very selfish. I am thinking too much of my own suffering. You, too, have suffered, dear, and you say nothing," and as she spoke her voice softened to a whisper. "But, May, your sacrifice _was_ to the Great G.o.d of your nation--the Great G.o.d of all nations."

"The sacrifice had nothing to do with me," said May, turning away. "It was his."

"But you endure the loss, the vacant place," said Lady Dashwood.

"I know what a vacant place means," said May, quietly, "and my vacant place will never be filled--except by the children of other women! Good night, dear aunt," and she walked away quickly, without looking back.

Then she found the door of her room and went in.

Lady Dashwood's eyes followed her, till the door closed.

"I ought not to have said what I did," murmured Lady Dashwood. "Oh, dear May, poor May," and she went back into her room.

Gwen was still sleeping peacefully.