The Romance of His Life Part 3

He got some note-paper with a little silver M. on a blue lozenge on it and wrote another note. He was going to Farnham for a few days to stay with his eldest brother, who was quartered there. And in this note Maud--Maitland's Maud as we now called her--diffidently ventured to ask for elucidation on one or two points of the lectures which had proved too abstruse for her feminine intellect. She showed considerable intelligence for a woman, and real knowledge of the lectures--I did that part--and suggested that as her letters, if addressed to her, were apt to go to her maiden aunt of the same name with whom she was staying, and who was a very old-fas.h.i.+oned person, totally opposed to the higher education of women--that if he was so good as to find time to answer her questions it would be best to direct to her at the Post Office, Farnham, under her initials M.M., where she could easily send for them.

I betted a pound to a penny that Maitland would not rise to this bait, and Barrett took it. I told him you could see the hook through the worm.

Parker was uneasy, even when Barrett had explained to him that it was impossible for us to get into trouble in the matter.

"You always say that," said Parker, with harrowing experiences in the back-ground of his mind.

"Well, I say it again. I know your powers of obtruding yourself on the notice of the authorities, but how do even you propose to wedge yourself into a sc.r.a.pe on this occasion? With all your gifts in that line you simply can't do it."

Parker ruminated.

"Ought we to--"

"Ought we to what?"

"To pull his leg to such an extent? Isn't it taking rather a--rather a--er responsibility?"

"Responsibility sits as lightly on me as dew upon the rose," said Barrett. "You copy out that."

Parker copied it out and Barrett went off to Farnham. A few days later he re-appeared. I was smoking in Parker's room when he came in.

He sat down under the lamp, drew a fat letter from his waistcoat pocket, and read it aloud to us. It was Maitland's answer.

It really was a ghastly letter, the kind of literary preachy rot which you read in a book, which I never thought people really wrote, not even people like Maitland, who seem to live in a world of shams. It was improving and patronising and treacly, and full of information, partly about the lectures, but mostly about himself. He came out in a very majestic light you may be sure of that. And at the end he begged her not to hesitate to write to him again if he could be of the least use to her, that busy as he undoubtedly was, his college work never seemed in his eyes as important as real human needs.

"He's cribbed that out of a book," interrupted Parker. "Newby the tutor in 'Belchamber,' who is a most awful prig, says those very words."

"Prigs all say the same things," said Barrett airily. "If Maitland read 'Belchamber,' he would think Newby was a caricature of him. He'd _never_ believe that he was plagiarising Newby. The cream of the letter is still to come," and he went on reading.

Maitland patted the higher education of women on the head, and half hinted at a meeting, and then withdrew it again, saying that some of the difficulties in her mind, which he recognised to be one of a high order, might be more easily eliminated verbally, and that he should be at Farnham during the vacation, but that he feared his stay would be brief, and his time was hopelessly bespoken beforehand, etc., etc.

"He might be an Adonis," said Parker. "He'll be coy and virginal next."

"He'll be a lot of things before long," said Barrett grimly. "Get out your inkpot, Parker. I'm going to have another shy at him."

"You're _not_ going to suggest a meeting! For goodness sake, Barrett, be careful. You will be saying Jones must dress up as a woman next."

"Well, if he does, I won't," I said. "I simply won't."

I had taken a good many parts in University plays.

"The sight of Jones as a female would make any man's gorge rise," said Barrett contemptuously. "I know I had to shut my eyes when I made love to him at 'The Footlights' last year. I never knew two such victims of hysteria as you and Jones. Suggest a meeting! Maud suggest a meeting!

What do you know of women! I tell you two moral lepers, unfit to tie the shoestring of a pure woman like Maud, that it takes a Galahad like me to deal with a situation of this kind. What you've got to remember is that I'm not trying to entangle him."

Cries of "Oh! Oh!" from the Committee.

"I mean Maud isn't. I am, but that's another thing. You two wretched, whited sepulchres haven't got hold of the true inwardness of Maud's character. Your gross, a.s.signating minds don't apprehend her. Maud is just one of those golden-haired, white-handed angels who go through life girthing up a man's ideals; who exist only in the imagination of elderly men like Maitland, who has never seen a woman in his life, and who does not know that unless they are imbeciles they draw the line at drivel like that letter. Bless her! _She's_ not going to suggest a meeting.

He'll do that and enjoy doing it. Can't you see Maitland in his new role of ruthless pursuer--the relentless male? No more easy conquests for him, sitting in his college chair, mowing them all down like a Maxim as far as--Ely. He's got to _work_ this time. I tell you two miserable poltroons that this is going to make a man of Maitland. He's been an old woman long enough."

"All I can say is," said Parker, ignoring the allusion to Ely, "that if the Almighty hasn't a sense of humour you will find yourself in a tight place some day, Barrett."

My pen fails me to record the diabolical manner in which Barrett played with his victim. It would have been like a cat and mouse if you can imagine the mouse throwing his chest out and fancying himself all the time. Barrett inveigled Maitland into going to Farnham, and accounted somehow for Maud's non-appearance at the interview coyly deprecated by Maud, and consequently hotly demanded by Maitland. He actually made him shave off his moustache. Parker and I lost heavily on that. We each bet a fiver that Barrett would never get it off. It was a beastly moustache which would have made any decent woman ill to look at. It did not turn up at the ends like Barrett's elder brother's, but grew over his mouth like hart's tongue hanging over a well. You could see his teeth through it. Horrible it was. But you can't help how your hair grows, so I'm not blaming Maitland, and it was better gone. But we never thought Barrett would have done it. I must own my opinion of him rose.

And he kept it up all through the long vacation with a pertinacity I should never have given him credit for. He took an artistic pride in it, and the letters were first rate. I did not think so at first; I thought them rather washy until I saw how they took. Barrett said what Maitland needed was a milk and water diet. He seemed to know exactly the kind of letter that would fetch a timid old bachelor. But it was not all "beer and skittles" for Barrett. He sorely wanted to make Maud stand up to him once or twice, and put her foot through his mild plat.i.tudes. He wrote one or two capital letters in a kind of rage, but he always groaned and tore them up afterward.

"If Maud has any character whatever," he sometimes said, "if she shows the least sign of seeing him except as he shows himself to her, if she has any interest in life beyond his lectures, he will feel she is not suited to him, and he will give his bridle-reins--I mean his waterproof spats--a shake, and adieu for evermore."

Barrett eventually lured Maitland into deep water, long past the bathing machine of adieu forevermore, as he called it. When he was too c.o.c.k-o-hoop, we reminded him that, after all, he was only one of a committee, and that he had been immensely helped by the young woman herself. She really looked such a saint, and as innocent as a pigeon's egg.

But Barrett stuck to it that her appearance ought, on the contrary, to have warned Maitland off, and that he was an infernal a.s.s to think such an exquisite creature as that would give a second thought to a stout old bachelor of forty-five, looking exactly like a cod that had lain too long on the slab. I could not see that Maitland was so very like a cod, but there was a vindictiveness about Barrett's description of him that I really think must have been caused by his romantic admiration of Parker's aunt, and his disgust at the slight that he felt had been put upon her. She married again the following year Barrett's elder brother's Colonel.

Barrett hustled Maitland about till he got almost thin. He snap-shotted him waiting for his Maud at Charing Cross station. And he did not make her write half as often as you would think. But he somehow egged Maitland on until, by the middle of the vacation, he had worked him up into such a state that Barrett had to send Maud into a rest cure for her health, so as to get a little rest himself.

When we met at Cambridge in October he had collected such a lot of material, such priceless letters, and several good photographs of Maitland's back, that he said he thought we were almost in a position to discover to him exactly how he stood.

He threw down his last letter, and as Parker and I read them, any lurking pity we felt for him as having fallen into Barrett's clutches, evaporated.

They showed Maitland at his worst. It was obvious that he was tepidly in love with Maud, or rather that he was anxious she should be in love with him. He said voluntarily all the things that torture ought not to have been able to wring out of him. He told her the story of the woman who had quarrelled with him because he did not dance attendance on her, and several other incidents which meant, if they meant anything, that there was something in his personality, hidden from his own searching self-examination, which was deadly to the peace of mind of the opposite s.e.x. He was very humble about it. He did not understand it, but there it was. He said that he had from boyhood lived an austere, intellectual life, which he humbly hoped had not been without effect on the tone of the college, that he had never met so far any one whom he could love.

"That's colossal," said Parker, suddenly, striking the letter. "Never met any one he could love. He'll never better that."

But Maitland went one better. He said he still hoped that some day, etc., etc., that he now saw with great self-condemnation that if his life had been altruistic in some ways, it had been egotistic in others, as in preferring his own independence to the mutual services of affection; that he must confess to his shame that he had received more than his share of love, and that he had not given out enough.

"He's determined she shall know how irresistible he is," said Barrett.

"I had no idea these early Victorian methods of self-advertis.e.m.e.nt were still in vogue even among the most elderly Dons."

"Hang it all!" blurted out Parker, reddening. "The matter has gone beyond a joke. We haven't any right to see his mind without its clothes on. You always say the nude is beautiful. But really--Maitland undraped--viewed through a key-hole, sets my teeth on edge."

"Undraped? you prude," said Barrett. "What are you talking about?

Maitland is clothed up to his eyes in his own illusions. He's padded out all round with them back and front to such an extent that you can't see the least vestige of the human form divine. Personally, I don't think he has one. I don't believe he is a man at all, but just a globular ma.s.s of conceit and unpublished matter, swathed in a college gown. The thing that revolts me is the way he postures before her. Malvolio and his garters isn't in it with Maitland. Good Lord! Supposing she were a real live woman! What a mercy for him that it's only us, that it's all strictly _en famille_. I always have said that it's better to keep women out of love affairs."

"How did you answer this?" said Parker, pus.h.i.+ng the last letter from him in disgust.

"I let him see at last--a little."

"That it was all a joke?"

"No. That I--that Maud, I mean--cared. She did not say much. She never does. She mostly sticks to flowers and sunsets, but she gave a little hint of it, and threw in at the same time that she was very much out of health and going abroad."

"That'll put him off. He'll back out. He would hate to have a delicate wife. He might have to look after her, instead of her waiting hand and foot on him."

"We shall see," said Barrett. "Her last letter was posted at Dover."

"Well, mind! It's got to be the last," said Parker decisively. "I had not realised you had been playing the devil to such an extent as this. I had a sort of idea that you were only one of a committee. And what a frightful lot of trouble you must have taken. I suppose Maud was always moving about so that he could never nail her."

"Always, just where I was going, too, by a curious coincidence. And her old aunt is a regular tartar; I don't suppose there ever was such a typical female guardian outside a penny novelette. But she is turning out a trump now about taking Maud abroad, I will say that for her. They remain at Dover a week. I've arranged for it. I knew you two would wish me to feel myself quite untrammelled, and, indeed, I wish it myself.

Then we'll hand him the whole series, and see how he takes it; and tell him we've shown it to a few of his most intimate friends first, and your aunt, Parker--she'll nearly die of it--and that they are all of opinion that it's the best thing he has done since his paper on Bacchylides."

Neither of us answered. In spite of myself I was sorry for Maitland.