The New Warden Part 50

She was turning the pages of a paper, ostentatiously looking at the ill.u.s.trations, but she was really waiting in suspense for his arrival and thinking of nothing else.

She looked up at him with a strange smile. "Back!" she said. "And you find me malingering!"

He came up to the bed. "You've been ill," he said, and he did not return her smile. "I'm very sorry, Lena."

"No, only tired," she said. "And I am already better, Jim," she went on, and now she showed great nervousness and her voice was jerky. "I have a letter for you. I want you to read it at once, dear, but not here; read it in the library. Don't stay now; go away, dear, and come and see me afterwards."

She gave him the letter with the handwriting downwards. She had thought this out beforehand. She feared the sight of his emotion. She could not bear it--just now. She was still feeling very shaky and very weak.

He took the letter and turned it over to see the handwriting. She thought he made a movement of surprise. His face she did not look at, she looked at the paper that was lying before her. She longed for him to go away, now that the letter was safely in his hands. He guessed, no doubt, what the letter was about! He must guess!

She little knew. He no more guessed its contents than he would have guessed that in order to secure his salvation some one would be allowed to rise from the dead! The letter he regarded as ominous--of some trouble, some dispute, something inevitable and miserable.

"I hope you have everything you want, Lena," he said as he walked to the door. "I hope Louise doesn't fuss you." Then he asked: "Have you ever fainted before?"

Lady Dashwood said she hadn't, but added that people over fifty generally fainted, and that she would not have gone to bed had not dear May insisted on it as well as Louise.

He went out. He found the corridor silent. He walked along with that letter in his pocket, feeling a great solitude within him. When he pa.s.sed Gwendolen's door, something gripped him painfully. And then there was _her_ door, too!

He returned to the library and sat down by the tea-table and the fire.

From his chair his eyes rested upon the great window at the end of the library. It was screened by curtains now. It was there, at that exact spot by the right-hand curtain, that Gwendolen had fancied she saw the ghost. A ghost, a thin filmy shape was probably her only conception of something Spiritual. That the story of the Barber's ghost, the story that he came as a prophet of ill tidings to the Warden of the College, seemed to fit in with recent events, the events of the last few days; this only made the whole episode more repulsive. He must train Gwendolen--if indeed she were capable of being trained! The mother would be perhaps even a greater obstacle to a sane and useful life than Gwendolen herself.

Very likely Gwendolen's letter was to announce that Lady Belinda insisted on coming at once, whether there was room for her or not; or possibly the letter contained some foolish enclosure from Lady Belinda, and Gwendolen was shy of communicating it, but had been ordered to do so.

Possibly the letter contained a cutting announcing the engagement! He had glanced through the _Times_ yesterday and this morning very hastily.

Gwendolen's mother might be capable of announcing the engagement before it had actually taken place!

He poured out a cup of tea and drank it, and then took the letter from his pocket.

He started at the opening of his door. Robinson brought in an American visitor, who came with an introduction. The introduction was lying on the desk, not yet opened. The Warden rose--escape was impossible. He put the letter back into his pocket.

"Bring fresh tea, Robinson," said the Warden.

But the stranger declined it. He had business in view. He had a string of solemn questions to ask upon world matters. He wanted the answers. He was writing a book, he wanted copy. He had come, metaphorically speaking, note-book and pencil in hand.

The Warden, with his mind upon private matters, looked gloomily at this visitor to Oxford. Even about "world" matters, with that letter in his pocket, he found it difficult to tolerate an interviewer. How was he to get through his work if he felt like this?

The American, too, became uneasy. He found the Warden unwilling to give him any dogmatic p.r.o.nouncements on the subject of Literature, on the subject of Education, or the subject of Woman now and Woman in the immediate future. The Warden declined to say whether the Church of England would work for union or whether it was going to split up and dwindle into rival sects. He was also guarded in his remarks about the political situation in England. He would not prophesy the future of Labour, or the fate of Landowners. The Warden was not encouraging. With that letter in his pocket the Warden found it difficult to a.s.sume the patient attention that was due to note-book visitors from afar.

This was a bad beginning, surely! How was the future to be met?

The American was about to take his leave, considerably disappointed with the Heads of Oxford colleges, but he suspected that American neutrality might be at the bottom of the Warden's reticence.

"I am not one of those Americans," he said, rising, "who regard President Woodrow Wilson as the only statesman in the world at this present moment."

The Warden threw his cigarette into the fire. "Wilson has one qualification for statesmans.h.i.+p," he said, rising and speaking as if he was suddenly roused to interest by this highly contentious subject.

The American was surprised. "I presume, coming from you, Professor, that you speak of the President's academic training?" he said.

"I am not a Professor," said the Warden, at last sufficiently awakened from his preoccupation to make a correction that he should have made before. "The University has not conferred that honour upon me. Yes, I mean an academic training. When a man who is trained to think meets a new problem in politics he pauses to consider it; he takes time; and for this the crowd jeer at him! The so-called practical man rarely pauses; he doesn't see, unless he has genius, that he mustn't treat a new problem as if it were an old one. He decides at once, and for this the crowd admire him. 'He knows his own mind,' they say!"

The Warden spoke with a ring of sarcasm in his voice. It was a sarcasm secretly directed against himself. That letter in his pocket was the cause.

He had been confronted in the small world of his own life with a new problem--marriage, and he ought to have understood that it was new, new to himself, complicated by his position and needing thought; and he had not thought, he had acted. He had belied the use and dignity of his training. Had he any excuse? There was the obligation to marry, and there was "pity." Were these excuses? They were miserable excuses.

But he had no time to argue further with himself, the inexorable voice of the man standing opposite to him broke in.

"In your view, Warden, the practical man is too previous?" said the American, making notes (in his own mind).

"He is too confident," said the Warden. "It is difficult enough to make an untrained man accept a new fact. It is still more difficult to make him think out a new method!"

"I opine," said the American, "that in your view President Wilson has only one qualification for statesmans.h.i.+p?"

"I didn't say that," said the Warden. "He may have the other, I mean character. Wilson may have the moral courage to act in accordance with his mental insight, and if so, if he has both the mental and moral force necessary, he might well be, what you do not yourself hold, the only living statesman in the world. Time will tell."

Here the Warden smiled a curious smile and made a movement to indicate that the visit must come to an end. He must be alone--he needed to think--alone. How was he at this moment showing "character, moral courage?" Here he was, unable to bear the friction of an ordinary interview. Here he was, almost inclined to be discourteous. Here he was, determined to bear no longer with his visitor.

When the door closed upon the stranger, the Warden, sick with himself and sick with the world, turned to his desk. His letters must be looked through at once. Very well, let him begin with the letter in his pocket.

But he first sorted his other letters, throwing away advertis.e.m.e.nts and useless papers. Then he took the letter from his pocket. The very handwriting showed incapacity and slackness. At dinner he would have the writer of this letter on one side of him, and on the other--he dared not think! The Warden ground his teeth and tore open the letter, and then a knock came at his door.

"Come in," he said almost fiercely.

Robinson came in. "I was to remind you, sir, that Mr. Bingham would be here to dinner."

So much the better. "Very well, Robinson," he said.

Robinson withdrew.

The letter was a long one. It was addressed at the top "Potten End."

"Potten End," said the Warden, half aloud. This was strange! Then she was not in the house!

The letter began--

"Dear Dr. Middleton,

"When you get this letter I shall have left your house and I shan't return. I hope you will forgive me. I don't know how to tell you, but I have broken off our engagement----"

The Warden stared at the words. There were more to come, but these--these that he had read! Were they true?

"My G.o.d!" he exclaimed, below his breath, "I don't deserve it!" and he made some swift strides in the room; "I don't deserve it!"