The New Warden Part 53

"One doesn't know how such rumours come about," continued Bingham; "perhaps you hadn't even heard of this one?" He looked across at May and round at the Warden. Neither of them seemed to be aware that a question was being asked.

"I didn't know King's even claimed a ghost," said Bingham again. "I've heard of the ghost of Sh.e.l.ley in the High," he added, smiling. "A ghost for the tourist who comes to see the Sh.e.l.ley Memorial."

May looked down rather closely at the table.

The Warden moved stiffly. "I don't believe Sh.e.l.ley would want to come,"

he said. "He always despised his Alma Mater."

"He was a bit of an _enfant terrible_," said Bingham, "from the tutor's point of view."

May raised her eyes with relief; the Warden had parried the question of the ghost with skill.

"And I don't believe," said the Warden, "that any one returns who has merely roystered within our walls," and he smiled.

Bingham was now looking very attentively at the Warden out of his dark eyes.

"Jeremy Bentham," he said, "seems to have been afraid of ghosts, when he was an undergraduate here. He was afraid of barging against them on dark college staircases. It's a fear I can't grasp. I would much rather come into collision with any ghost than with the Stroke of the 'Varsity Eight, whether the staircase was dark or not."

"If there are ghosts," said the Warden, pensively, "I should expect to see Cranmer, on some wild night, wandering near the places where he endured his pa.s.sion and his death. Or I should expect to see Laud pacing the streets, amazed at the order and discipline of modern Oxford. If personal attachment could bring a man from the grave," he went on, meeting Bingham's eyes with a smile, "why shouldn't that least ghostly of all scholars, your old master, Jowett--why shouldn't he walk at night when Balliol is asleep?"

"Then there was nothing in the rumour," said Bingham, "that your King's ghost has turned up?"

"The Warden doesn't believe in ghosts," said May, looking across the table eagerly. She remembered how he had stood by the bedside of Gwendolen that night. She recalled the room vividly, the gloom of the room and he alone standing in the light thrown upon him by the lamp. She could recall every tone of his voice as he said: "You thought you saw something. You made a mistake. You saw nothing, you imagined that you saw--there was nothing," and how his voice convinced _her_, as she stood by the fire and listened. How long ago was that--only three days--it seemed like a month.

"No," said the Warden, "I don't believe in ghosts. At least, I don't believe that our dead"--and he p.r.o.nounced the last word reverently--"are such that they can return to us in human form, or through the intervention of some hired medium. But if there are ghosts in Oxford,"

he went on, and now he turned to Bingham, as if he were answering his question--"if there are ghosts in Oxford they will be the ghosts of those who were, in life, bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. I am thinking of those men who lived and died in Oxford, recluses who knew no other world, and of whom the world knew nothing--men who used to flit like shadows from their solitary rooms to the Lecture hall and to High table and to the Common room. Those men were monks in all but name; celibates, solitaries--men to whom the laughter of youth was maddening pain."

May's eyes dropped! What the Warden was saying stabbed her, not merely because of the words he said, but because his voice conveyed the sense of that poignant pain.

"Such men as I speak of," he went on, "Oxford must always have possessed, even in the boisterous days when you fellows of All Souls,"

he said, addressing Bingham, "used to pull your doors off their hinges to make bonfires in honour of the mallard. There always have been these men, students shy and sensitive, shrinking from the rougher side of the ordinary man, shrinking from ordinary social life; men who are only courageous in their devotion to learning and to truth; men who are lonely with that awful loneliness of those who live in the world of thoughts. I knew one such man myself. Those who believe in ghosts may come upon the shades of these men in the pa.s.sages and in the cloisters at night, or hiding in the dark recesses of our college windows. Why, I can feel them everywhere--and yet I don't believe in ghosts." The Warden placed his elbows upon the table and rested his chin upon his hands, and looked down at the table-cloth.

May said nothing; she was listening, her face bent but expressive even to her eyebrows.

"Neither do I," said Bingham, in an altered voice. "I don't believe in ghosts, and yet, what do we know of this world? We talk of it glibly.

But what do we know of the forces which make up the phantasmagoria that we call the World? What do we know of this vast universe? We perceive something of it by touch, by sight, sound and smell. These are the doors through which its forces penetrate the brain of man. These doors are our way of 'being aware' of life. The psychology of man is in its infancy.

And remember"--here Bingham leaned over the table and rested his eyes on May--"it is man studying himself! That makes the difficulty!" Bingham was serious now, and he had slipped from slang into the academic form in which his thoughts really moved.

"And we don't even know whether our ways of perceiving are the only ways," said the Warden.

"Anyhow," said Bingham, turning to him, "the ghosts you 'feel,' and which you and I don't believe in, belong to the old Oxford, the Oxford which is gone."

There came a sudden silence in the long room, and May felt that she ought to make a move. She looked at the Warden.

"That Oxford," continued Bingham, "is gone for ever. It began to go when men hedged it round with red brick, and went to live under red-tiled roofs with wives and children."

"Yes, it has gone," said the Warden. "Must you leave us!" he asked, rising, as May looked at him and made a movement to rise.

Bingham rose to his feet, but he stood with his hand holding the foot of his gla.s.s and gazing into its crimson depths.

"Pardon, Middleton! Mrs. Dashwood, one moment," he said, and he raised his gla.s.s solemnly till it was almost on a level with his dark face.

"Will you pledge me?" he asked. "To the old Oxford that is past and gone!"

The Warden and May were both drinking water. They raised their gla.s.ses and touched Bingham's wine which glowed in the light from above, almost suggesting something sacramental. And Bingham himself looked like a smooth, swarthy priest of mediaeval story, half-serious and half-gay, disguised in modern dress.

"To the Oxford of sacred memory," he said.

They drank.

May was thinking deeply and as she was about to place her gla.s.s back upon the table, the thought that was struggling for expression came to her. She lifted her gla.s.s: "To the Oxford that is to be," she said gently. She glanced first at Bingham, and then her eyes rested for a moment upon the Warden.

Bingham watched her keenly. He could see that at that moment she had no thought of herself. Her thoughts were of Oxford alone, and, Bingham guessed, with the man with whom she identified Oxford.

Bingham hesitated to raise his gla.s.s. Was it a flash of jealousy that went through him? A jealousy of the new Oxford and all that it might mean to the two human beings beside him? If it was jealousy it died out as swiftly as it had come.

He raised his gla.s.s.

"To the Oxford of the Future," said the Warden.

"Ad multos annos," said Bingham.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE END OF BELINDA AND CO.

Lady Dashwood professed to be very much better the next morning when May looked in to see how she had slept.

"I'm a new woman," she said to May; "I slept till seven, and then, my dear, I began to think, and what do you think my thoughts were?"

May shook her head. "You thought it was Sunday morning."

"Quite true," said Lady Dashwood; "I heard the extra bells going on round us. No, what I was thinking of was, what on earth Marian Potten did with Gwendolen yesterday afternoon. I'm quite sure she will have made her useful. I can picture Marian making her guest put on a big ap.r.o.n and some old Potten gloves and taking her out into the garden to gather beans. I can picture them gathering beans till tea-time. Marian is sure to be storing beans, and she wouldn't let the one aged gardener she has got left waste his time on gathering beans. I can see Marian raking the pods into a heap and setting fire to the heap. I imagined that after tea Gwendolen played the 'Reverie' by Slapovski. After dinner: 'Patience.'"

May pondered.

"And now. May," said Lady Dashwood, looking tired in spite of her theory that she had become a new woman, "it's a lovely day; even Louise allows that the sun is s.h.i.+ning, and I can't have you staying indoors on my account. I won't allow you in my bedroom to-day. I shall be very busy."

"No!" said May, reproachfully. "I shall not allow business."

"I'm just going to write a letter to my dear old John, whom I've treated shamefully for a week, only sending him a scrawl on half a page. Now, I want you to go to church, or else for a walk. I can tell you what the doctor says when you come back."

May said neither "Yes" nor "No." She laughed a little and went out of the room.

In the breakfast-room the Warden was already there. They greeted each other and sat down together, and talked strict commonplaces till the meal was over. He did not ask May what she was going to do, neither did she ask him any questions. They both were following a line of action that they thought was the right one. Neither intended meeting the other unless circ.u.mstances compelled the meeting; circ.u.mstances like breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was clear to both of them that, except on these occasions, they had no business with each other. The Warden was clear about it because he was a man still ashamed.