The New Warden Part 22

CHAPTER XIII

THE EFFECT OF SUGGESTION

The clock struck midnight, and yet the Warden had not done what he had intended to do before he picked up that letter and read it. He had not gone to bed. He was still in his library, not at his desk, but in a great shabby easy-chair by the fire. He had put the lights out and was smoking in the half-dark.

So deeply absorbed was the Warden in his own thoughts that he did not hear the first knock on the door. But he heard the second knock, which was louder.

"Come in," he called, and he leaned forward in his chair. Who wanted him at such an hour? It would not be any one from the college?

The door opened and Lady Dashwood came in. She was in a dressing-gown.

"You haven't gone to bed," she said.

It was obvious that he hadn't gone to bed.

"No, not yet," said the Warden. And he added, "Do you want me?"

"I ought not to want you, dear," she said, "for I know you must be very tired."

Then she came up to the fireplace and stood looking down at her brother.

She saw that the spring and the hope had gone out of his face. He looked older.

"I have put Gwen to bed in my room, but even that has not quieted her,"

said Lady Dashwood, speaking slowly.

The Warden's face in the twilight looked set. He did not glance at his sister now.

"She has lost her self-control. Do you know what the silly child thinks she saw?"

Here Lady Dashwood paused, and waited for his reply.

"I hadn't thought. She fancied she saw something--a man!" he answered, in his deep voice.

He hadn't thought! There had been no room in his mind for anything but the doom that was awaiting him. One of his most bitter thoughts in the twilight of that room had been that a woman he could have loved was already under his roof when he took his destiny into his own hands and wrecked it.

"I don't know," he said, repeating mechanically an answer to his sister's question.

"She thought she saw the Barber's ghost," said Lady Dashwood.

The Warden looked up in surprise. There was a slight and bitter smile at the corners of his mouth. Then he straightened himself in his chair and looked frowning into the fire. That Gwendolen should have taken a college "story" seriously and "made a scene" about it was particularly repugnant to him.

"She came in here; why I don't know, and no doubt was full of the story about the Barber appearing in the library," said Lady Dashwood. "We ought not to have talked about it to any one so excitable. Then she knocked her head against the book-case and was in a state of daze, in which she could easily mistake the moonlight coming through an opening in the curtains for a ghost, and if a ghost, then of course the Barber's ghost. And so all this fuss!"

"I see," said the Warden, gloomily.

"As soon as we got upstairs, I had to pack Louise off before she had time to hear anything, for I can't have the whole household upset simply because a girl allows herself to become hysterical. May is now sitting with Gwen, as she won't be left alone for a moment."

"What are you going to do?" asked the Warden, in a slow hard voice.

"That's the question," she said, looking down at him narrowly.

"Do you want a doctor?" he asked. "Is it bad enough for that? It is rather late to ask any one to come in when there isn't any actual illness."

"A doctor would be worse than useless."

"Well, then, what do you suggest?" he asked.

"Couldn't you say something to her to quiet her?" said Lady Dashwood.

The Warden looked surprised. "I couldn't say anything, Lena, that you couldn't say. You can speak with authority when you like."

"More is wanted than that. She must be made to think she saw nothing here in this library," said Lady Dashwood. "You used to be able to 'suggest.' Don't you remember?"

The Warden pondered and said nothing.

"She would like to keep the whole house awake--if she had the chance,"

said Lady Dashwood, and the bitterness in her voice made her brother wince.

"Couldn't you make her believe that the ghost won't, or can't come again, or that there are no such things as ghosts?"

The Warden sat still; the glow was dying out of the cigar he held between his fingers. He did not move.

"When you were a boy you found it easy enough to suggest; I remember I disapproved of it. I want you to do it now, because we must have quiet in the house."

"She may not be susceptible to suggestion!" said the Warden, still obstinately keeping his seat.

"You think she is too flighty, that she has too little power of concentration," suggested Lady Dashwood, with a sting in her voice. "You must try: come, Jim! I want to get some rest, I'm very tired."

She did, indeed, look hollow-eyed, and seeing this he rose and threw his cigar into the fire. So this was the first thing he had to do as an engaged man: he had to prevent his future wife from disturbing the household. He had to distract her attention from absurd fears, he had to impose his will upon her. Such a relations.h.i.+p between them, the husband and wife that were to be, would be a relations.h.i.+p that he did not wish to have with any one whom he ought to respect, much less any one whom he ought to love.

The errand on which he was going was a repulsive one. If even a faint trace of romantic appreciation of the girl's beauty had survived in him, it would have vanished now. What he was going to do seemed like a denial of her ident.i.ty, and yet it seemed necessary to do it. Had he still much of that "pity" left for her that had impelled him to offer her a home?

They left the library and, as they pa.s.sed the curtained door of the Warden's bedroom, Lady Dashwood said, "You'll go to bed afterwards, Jim?"

She had spoken a moment ago of her own fatigue as if it was important.

She had now forgotten it. Her mind was never occupied for many moments with herself, she was now back again at her old habit, thinking of him.

He was tired. No wonder, worn out with worries, of his own making, alas!

"Yes," said the Warden, "yes, dear."

The lights in the hall were still burning, and he turned them out from the wall by the head of the staircase. Then they went up the short steps into the corridor. Lady Dashwood's room was at the end.

At the door of her room Lady Dashwood paused and listened, and turned round to her brother as if she were going to say something.

"What?" whispered the Warden, bending his head.

"Oh, nothing!" said Lady Dashwood, as if exasperated with her own thoughts. Then she opened the door and went in, followed by the Warden.