The New Warden Part 54

May was clear that she had no business to see the Warden except when necessity occasioned it, because each moment made her more unfaithful to the memory of the dead, to the memory of the dead man who could no longer claim her, who had given away his all at the call of duty and who had no power to hold her now. So she, too, being honourably proud, felt ashamed in the presence of the Warden.

All that morning was wasted. The doctor did not come, and May spent the time waiting for him. Lady Dashwood sat up in bed and wrote an apparently interminable letter to her husband. Whenever May appeared she said: "Go away, May!" and then she looked long and wistfully at her niece.

Two or three men came to lunch and went into the library afterwards with the Warden, and May went to her Aunt Lena's room.

"The doctor won't come now till after three, May, so you must go out, or you will really grieve me," said Lady Dashwood. "Jim will take you out.

He came in just after you left me before lunch, and I told him you would go out."

"You are supposed to be resting," said May, "and I can't have you making arrangements, dear Aunt Lena. I shall do exactly what I please, and shall not even tell you what I please to do. I do believe," she added, as she shook up the pillows, "that in the next world, dear, you will want to make plans for G.o.d, and that will get you into serious trouble."

Lady Dashwood sighed deeply. "Oh dear, oh dear," she said, "I suppose I must go on pretending I'm ill."

May shook her head at her and pulled down the blinds, and left her in the darkness suitable for repose.

The Warden had not mentioned a walk. Perhaps he hadn't found an opportunity with those men present! Should she go for a walk alone? She found herself dressing, putting on her things with a feverish haste.

Then she took off her coat and sat down, and took her hat off and held it on her knees.

She thought she heard the sound of a voice in the corridor outside, and she put on her hat with trembling fingers and caught up the coat and scarf and her gloves.

She went out into the corridor and found it empty and still. She went to the head of the stairs. There was no sound coming from the library. But even if the Warden were still there with the other men, she might not hear any sounds of their talk. They might be there or they might not. It was impossible to tell.

Perhaps he had gone to look for her in the drawing-room and, finding no one there, had gone out.

The drawing-room door was open. She glanced in. The room was empty, of course, and the afternoon suns.h.i.+ne was coming in through the windows, falling across the floor towards the fireplace. It would soon creep up to the portrait over the fireplace.

May waited several minutes, walking about the room and listening, and then she went out and closed the door behind her. She went down the staircase into the hall, opened the front door very slowly and went out.

An indescribable loneliness seized her as she walked over the gravelled court to the gates. The afternoon suns.h.i.+ne was less friendly than rain and bitter wind. She took the road to the parks, meeting the signs of the war that had obliterated the old Sunday afternoons of Oxford in the days of peace. Here was suffering, a deliberate preparation for more suffering. Did all this world-suffering make her small personal grief any less? Yes, it did; it would help her to get over the dreary s.p.a.ce of time, the days, months, years till she was a grey-haired woman and was resigned, having learned patience and even become thankful!

Once she thought she saw the figure of the Warden in the distance, and then her heart beat suffocatingly, but it was not he. Once she thought she saw Bingham walking with some other man. He rounded the walk by the river and--no, it was not Mr. Bingham--the face was different. She began asking herself questions that had begun to disturb her. Was the real tragedy of the Warden's engagement to him not the discovery that Gwendolen was silly and weak, but that she was not honourable? Had he suspected something of the kind before he received that letter? Wasn't it a suspicion of the kind that had made him speak as he did in the drawing-room after they had returned from Christ Church? Might he not have been contented with Gwendolen if she had been straight and true, however weak and foolish? Was he the sort of man who demands sympathy and understanding from friends, men and women, but something very different from a wife? Was the Warden one of those men who prefer a wife to be shallow because they shrink from any permanent demand being made upon their moral nature or their intellect? Perhaps the Warden craved a wife who was thoughtless, and, choosing Gwendolen, was disappointed in her, solely because he found she was not trustworthy. That suspicion was a bitter one. Was it an unjust suspicion?

As May walked, the river beside her slipped along slowly under the melancholy willows. The surface of the water was laden with fallen leaves and the wreckage of an almost forgotten summer. It was strangely sad, this river!

May turned away and began walking back to the Lodgings. There was a deepening suns.h.i.+ne in the west, a glow was coming into the sky. Oh, the sadness of that glorious sunset!

May was glad to hide away from it in the narrow streets. She was glad to get back to the court and to enter the darkened house, and yet there was no rest for her there. Soon, very soon, she would say good-bye to this calm secluded home and go out alone into the wilderness!

She walked straight to her room and took off her things, and then went into Lady Dashwood's room. Louise was arranging a little table for tea between the bed and the windows.

"Well!" cried Lady Dashwood. "So you have had a good walk!"

"It was a lovely afternoon," said May. She looked out of the window and could see the colour of the sunset reflected on the roof opposite.

Lady Dashwood watched Louise putting a cloth on the table, and remarked that "poor Jim" would be having tea all alone!

"I think the Warden is out," said May, as she stood at the window.

"Oh!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood, but at that moment the doctor was ushered into the room. He apologised for coming so late in the day, he had been pressed with work. "I'm perfectly well," said Lady Dashwood; "I don't need a doctor, you are simply wasted on me. I can come down to dinner."

There was no doubt that she was better. The doctor admitted it and praised her, but he refused to let her get up till the next day, and then only for tea in the drawing-room; and, strange to say, Lady Dashwood did not argue the point, merely remarking that she wasn't sure whether she could be trusted to remain in bed. She wouldn't promise that she could be trusted.

When the doctor left May slipped out with him, and they went along the corridor together.

"How much better is she?" she asked. "Is she really on the road to being quite well?"

"She's all right," said the doctor, as they went down the staircase, "but she mustn't be allowed to get as low as she was yesterday, or there will be trouble."

"And," said May, "what about me?" and she explained to him that she was only in Oxford on a visit and had work in London that oughtn't to be left.

"Has she got a good maid?" asked the doctor.

"An excitable Frenchwoman, but otherwise useful." They were at the front door now.

"And you really ought to go to-morrow?"

"I ought," said May, and her heart seemed to be sinking low down--lower and lower.

"Very well," said the doctor, "I suppose we must let you go, Mrs.

Dashwood," and as he spoke he pulled the door wide open. "Here is the Warden!" he said.

There was the Warden coming in at the gate. May was standing so that she could not see into the court. She started at the doctor's remark.

"I'll speak to him," he said, and, bowing, he went down the steps, leaving the door open behind him. May turned away and walked upstairs.

She wouldn't have to tell the Warden that she was going to-morrow; the doctor would tell him, of course. Would he care?

She went back to the bedroom, and Lady Dashwood looked round eagerly at her, but did not ask her any questions.

"Now, dear, pour out the tea," she said. "The doctor was a great interruption. My dear May, I wish I wasn't such an egotist."

"You aren't," said May, sitting down and pouring out two cups of tea.

"I am," said Lady Dashwood.

"Why?" asked May.

"Well, you see," said Lady Dashwood, "I was terribly upset about Belinda and Co., because Belinda and Co. had pushed her foot in at my front door, or rather at Jim's front door; but she's gone now, as far as I'm personally concerned. She's a thing of the past. But, and here it comes, Belindas are still rampant in the world, and there are male as well as female Belindas; and I bear it wonderfully. I shall quite enjoy a cup of tea. Thanks, darling."

"If anybody were to come and say to you," said May, looking deeply into her cup, "'Will you join a Society for the painless extermination of Belindas--Belindas of both cla.s.ses--Belindas in expensive furs, and tattered Belindas,' wouldn't you become a member, or at least give a guinea?"

Lady Dashwood smiled a little. "Dear May, how satirical you are with your poor old aunt!"

"I'm not satirical," said May.

"I'm afraid," groaned Lady Dashwood, "it's mainly because we think things will be made straight in the next world that we don't do enough here. Now, I haven't that excuse, May, because you know I never have looked forward to the next world. Somehow I can't!"

Something in her aunt's voice made May look round at her.

"Don't be sorrowful, dear," she said.