Читать книгу The New Warden - Ritchie David George - Страница 1

The Founders and the Benefactors of Oxford, Princes, wealthy priests, patriotic gentlemen, noble ladies with a taste for learning; any of these as they travelled along the high road, leaving behind them pastures, woods and river, and halted at the gates of the grey sacred city, had they been in melancholy mood, might have pictured to themselves all possible disasters by fire and by siege that could mar this garnered glory of spiritual effort and pious memory. Fire and siege were the disasters of the old days. But a new age has it own disasters – disasters undreamed of in the old days, and none of these lovers of Oxford as they entered that fair city, ever could have foretold that in time to come Oxford would become enclosed and well-nigh stifled by the peaceful encroachment of an endless ocean of friendly red brick, lapping to its very walls.

The wonder is that Oxford still exists, for the free jerry-builder of free England, with his natural right to spoil a landscape or to destroy the beauty of an ancient treasure house, might have forced his cheap villas into the very heart of the city; might have propped his shameless bricks, for the use of Don and of shopkeeper, against the august grey college walls: he might even have insulted and defaced that majestic street whose towers and spires dream above the battlemented roofs and latticed windows of a more artistic age.

But why didn't he? Why didn't he, clothed in the sanctity of cheapness, desecrate the inner shrine?

The Wardens and the Bursars of colleges could tell us much, but the stranger and the pilgrim, coming to worship, feel as if there must have flashed into being some sudden Hand from Nowhere and a commanding Voice saying – "Thus far shalt thou come and no farther," so that the accursed jerry-builder (under the impression that he was moved by some financial reasons of his own) must have obediently picked up his little bag of tools and trotted off to destroy some other place.

Anyhow the real Oxford has been spared – but it is like a fair mystic gem in a coarse setting. No green fields and no rustling woods lead the lover of Oxford gently to her walls.

The Beauty of England lies there – ringed about with a desolation of ugliness – for ever. Still she is there.

Oxford has never been merely a city of learning, it has been a fighting city.

In the twelfth century it sheltered Matilda in that terrible, barbaric struggle of young England.

In the seventeenth century it was a city in arms for the Stuarts. But these were civil wars. Now in the twentieth century Oxford has risen like one man, like Galahad – youthful and knightly – urgent at the Call of Freedom and the Rights of Nations.

And this Oxford is filled with the "sound of the forging of weapons," the desk has become a couch for the wounded, the air is full of the wings of war.

In this Oxford where the black gown has been laid aside and young men hurry to and fro in the dress of the battle-field – in this Oxford no man walked at times more heavily, feeling the grief that cannot be made articulate, than did the Warden of King's College as he went about his work, a lonely man, without wife or child and with poignant memories of the very blossom of young manhood plucked from his hand and gone for ever.

And of the men who passed under his college gates and through the ivy-clad quadrangles, most were strangers – coming and going – learning the arts of war – busy under orders, and the few, a poor remnant of academic youth – foreigners or weaklings. And he, the Warden himself, felt himself almost a stranger – for into his life had surged new thoughts, anxious fears and ambitious hopes – for England, the England of the years to come – an England rising up from her desolation and her mourning and striving to become greater, more splendid and more spiritual than she had been before.

It was a late October afternoon in 1916 and the last rays of autumn sunshine fell through the drawing-room windows of the Warden's lodgings. These rays of sunshine lit up a notable portrait over the stone fireplace. The portrait was of a Warden of the eighteenth century; a fine fleshy face it was, full of the splendid noisy paganism of his time. You can stand where you will in the room, but you cannot escape the sardonic stare that comes from his relentless, wide-open, luminous eyes. He seems as if he challenged you to stop and listen to the secret of his double life – the life of a scholar and divine of easy morals. Words seemed actually upon his lips, thoughts glowing in his eyes – and yet – there is silence.

There was only one person in the room, a tall vigorous woman, still handsome in spite of middle age, and she was looking up at the portrait with her hands clasped behind her back. She was not thinking of the portrait – her thoughts were too intent on something else. Her thoughts indeed had nothing to do with the past – they were about the future, the future of the new Warden, Dr. Middleton, the future of this only brother of hers whom she loved more than anyone in the world – except her own husband; a brother more than ten years younger than herself, to whom she had been a mother till she married and who remained in her eyes a sort of son, all the more precious to her because children had been denied her.

She had come at her brother's call to arrange his new home for him. She had arranged everything with sober economy, because Oxford was mourning. She had retained all that she found endurable of the late Warden's. And now she turned round and looked on her handiwork.

The room wore an air of comfort, it was devoid of all distressful knick-knacks and it was arranged as were French "Salons" of the time of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse for conversation, for groups of talkers, for books and papers; the litter of culture. It was a drawing-room for scholars in their leisure moments and for women to whom they could talk. But there was no complaisance in Lady Dashwood's face as she looked at her brother's drawing-room, just because her thoughts were deeply occupied with his future. What was his future to be like? What was in store for him? And these thoughts led her to give expression to a sudden outspoken remark – unflattering to that future.

"And now, what woman is going to become mistress of this room?"

Lady Dashwood's voice had a harshness in it that startled even herself. "What woman is going to reign here?" she went on, as if daring herself to be gentle and resigned. After she had looked round the room her eye rested upon the portrait over the mantelpiece. He looked as if he had heard her speak and stared back at her with his large persistent selfish eyes – full of cynical wonder. But he remained silent. These were times that he did not understand – but he observed!

"It's on Jim's conscience that he must marry, now that men are so scarce. He's obsessed with the idea," continued Lady Dashwood, thinking to herself. "And being like all really good and great men – absolutely helpless – he is prepared to marry any fool who is presented to him." Then she added, "Any fool – or worse!"

"And," she went on, speaking angrily to herself, "knowing that he is helpless – I stupidly go and introduce into this house, a silly girl with a pretty face whose object in coming is to be – Mrs. Middleton."

Lady Dashwood was mentally lashing herself for this stupidity.

"I go and actually put her in his way – at least," she added swiftly, "I allow her mother to bring her and force her upon us and leave her – for the purpose of entrapping him – and so – I've risked his future! And yet," she went on as her self-accusation became too painful, "I never dreamt that he would think of a girl so young – as eighteen – and he forty – and full of thoughts about the future of Oxford – and the New World. Somehow I imagined some pushing female of thirty would pretend to sympathise with his aspirations and marry him: I never supposed – But I ought to have supposed! It was my business to suppose. Here have I left my husband alone, when he hates being alone, for a whole month, in order to put Jim straight – and then I go and 'don't suppose' – I'm more than a fool – I'm – " The right word did not come to her mind.

Here Lady Dashwood's indignation against herself made the blood tingle hotly in her hands and face. She was by nature calm, but this afternoon she was excited. She mentally pictured the Warden – just when there was so much for him to do – wasting his time by figuring as a sacrifice upon the Altar of a foolish Marriage. She saw the knife at his throat – she saw his blood flow.

At this moment the door opened and the old butler, who had served other Wardens and who had been retained along with the best furniture as a matter of course, came into the room and handed a telegram to Lady Dashwood.

She tore open the envelope and read the paper: "Arrive this evening – about seven. May."

"Thank – !" exclaimed Lady Dashwood – and then she suddenly paused, for she met the old thoughtful eye of Robinson.

"Yes!" she remarked irrelevantly. Then she folded the paper. "There is no answer," she said. "When you've taken the tea away – please tell Mrs. Robinson that quite unexpectedly Mrs. Jack Dashwood is arriving at seven. She must have the blue room – there isn't another one ready. Don't let in any callers for me, Robinson."

All that concerned the Warden's lodgings concerned Robinson. Oxford – to Robinson meant King's College. He had "heard tell" of "other colleges"; in fact he had passed them by and had seen "other college" porters standing about at their entrance doors as if they actually were part of Oxford. Robinson felt about the other colleges somewhat as the old-fashioned Evangelical felt about the godless, unmanageable, tangled, nameless rabble of humanity (observe the little "h") who were not elected. The "Elect" being a small convenient Body of which he was a member.

King's was the "Elect" and Robinson was an indispensable member of it.

Robinson went downstairs with his orders, which, dropping like a pebble into the pool of the servants' quarters, started a quiet expanding ripple to the upper floor, reaching at last to the blue bedroom.

Alone in the drawing-room Lady Dashwood was able to complete her exclamatory remark that Robinson's solemn eye had checked.

"Thank Heaven!" she said, and she said it again more than once. She laughed even and opened the telegram again and re-read it for the pure pleasure of seeing the words. "Arrive this evening."

"I've risked Jim's life – and now I've saved it." Then Lady Dashwood began to think carefully. There was no train arriving at seven from Malvern – but there was one arriving at six and one at seven fifteen. Anyhow May was coming. Lady Dashwood actually laughed with triumph and said – "May is coming —that for 'Belinda and Co.'!"

"Did you speak to me, Lady Dashwood?" asked a girlish voice, and Lady Dashwood turned swiftly at the sound and saw just within the doorway a girlish figure, a pretty face with dark hair and large wandering eyes.

"No, Gwen!" said Lady Dashwood. "I didn't know you were there – " and again she folded the telegram and her features resumed their normal calm. With that folded paper in her hand she could look composedly now at that pretty face and slight figure. If she had made a criminal blunder she had – though she didn't deserve it – been able to rectify the blunder. May Dashwood was coming! Again: "That for Belinda and Co.!"

The girl came forward and looked round the room. She held two books in her hand, one the Warden had lent her on her arrival – a short guide to Oxford. She was still going about with it gazing earnestly at the print from time to time in bird-like fashion.

"Mrs. Jack Dashwood is arriving this afternoon," said Lady Dashwood as she moved towards the door.

"Oh," said Gwen, and she stood still in the glow of the windows, her two books conspicuous in her hand. She looked at the nearest low easy-chair and dropped into it, propped one book on her knee and opened the other at random. Then she gazed down at the page she had opened and then looked round the room at Lady Dashwood, keenly aware that she was a beautiful young girl looking at an elderly woman.

"Mrs. Dashwood is my husband's niece by marriage," said Lady Dashwood.

"Oh, yes," said Gwen, who would have been more interested if the subject of the conversation had been a man and not a woman.

"You don't happen to know if the Warden has come back?" asked Lady Dashwood as she moved to the door.

"He is back," said Gwen, and a slightly deeper colour came into her cheeks and spread on to the creamy whiteness of her slender neck.

"In his library?" asked Lady Dashwood, stopping short and listening for the reply.

"Yes!" said Gwen, and then she added: "He has lent me another book." Here she fingered the book on her knee. "A book about the – what-you-may-call-'ems of King's, I'm sorry but I can't remember. We were talking about them at lunch – a word like 'jumps'!"

If a man had been present Gwen would have dimpled and demanded sympathy with large lingering glances; she would have demanded sympathy and approbation for not knowing the right word and only being able to suggest "jumps."

One thing Gwen had already learned: that men are kinder in their criticism than women! It was priceless knowledge.

"Founders, I suppose you mean," said Lady Dashwood and she opened the door. "Never mind," she said to herself as she closed the door behind her. "Never mind – May is coming – 'Jumps!' What a self-satisfied little monkey the girl is!"

At the head of the staircase it was rather dark and Lady Dashwood put on the lights. Immediately at right angles to the drawing-room door two or three steps led up to a corridor that ran over the premises of the College porter. In this corridor were three bedrooms looking upon the street, bedrooms occupied by Lady Dashwood and by Gwendolen Scott, and the third room, the blue room, about to be occupied by Mrs. Dashwood. Lady Dashwood passed the corridor steps, passed the head of the staircase, and went towards a curtained door. This was the Warden's bedroom. Beyond was his library door. At this door beyond, she knocked.

An agreeable voice answered her knock. She went in. The library was a noble room. Opposite the door was a wide, high latticed window, hung with heavy curtains and looking on to the Entrance Court. To the right was a great fireplace with a small high window on each side of it. On the left hand the walls were lined with books – and a great winged book-case stood out from the wall, like a screen sheltering the door which Lady Dashwood entered. Over the door was the portrait of a Cardinal once a member of King's. Over the mantelpiece was a large engraving of King's as it was in the sixteenth century. At a desk in the middle of the room sat the Warden with his back to the fire and his face towards the serried array of books. He was just turning up a reading-lamp – for he always read and wrote by lamplight.

"Robinson hasn't drawn your curtains," said Lady Dashwood.

"I am going to draw them – he came in too soon," said the Warden, without moving from his seat. His face was lit up by the flame of the lamp which he was staring at intently. There was just a faint sprinkling of grey in his brown hair, but on the regular features there was almost no trace of age.

"You have given Gwen another book to read," said Lady Dashwood coming up to the writing-table.

The Warden raised his eyes very slowly to hers. His eyes were peculiar. They were very narrow and blue, seeming to reflect little. On the other hand, they seemed to absorb everything. He moved them very slowly as if he were adjusting a photographic apparatus.

"Yes," he said.

"You might just as well, my dear, hand out a volume of the Encyclopædia Britannica to the sparrows in your garden," said his sister.

The Warden made no reply, he merely moved the lamp very slightly nearer to the writing pad in front of him.

He had a stored-up memory of pink cheeks, a pure curve of chin and neck, a dark curl by the ear; objects young and graceful and gradually absorbed by those narrow eyes and stored in the brain. He also had memories less pleasant of the slighting way in which once or twice his sister had spoken of "Belinda and Co.," meaning by that the mother of this pretty piece of pretty girlhood, and the girl herself.

"She tries hard to read because we expect her to," continued Lady Dashwood. "If she had her own way she would throw the books into the fire, as tiresome stodge."

The Warden was listening with an averted face and now he remarked —

"Did you come in, Lena, to tell me this?"

When the Warden was annoyed there was in his voice and in his manner a "something" which many people called "formidable." As Lady Dashwood stood looking down at him, there flashed into her mind a scene of long ago, where the Warden, then an undergraduate, had (for a joke at a party in his rooms) induced by suggestion a very small weak man with peaceful principles to insist on fighting the Stroke of the college Eight, a man over six feet and broad in proportion. She remembered how she had laughed, and yet how she made her brother promise not to exercise that power again. Probably he had completely forgotten the incident. Why! it was nearly eighteen years ago, nearly nineteen; and here was James Middleton no longer an undergraduate but the Warden! Lady Dashwood bent over him smiling and laid her solid motherly hand upon his head. "Oh, dear, how time passes!" she said. "Jim, you are such a sweet lamb. No, I didn't come to tell you that. I came to ask you if you were going to dine with us this evening?"

"Yes," said the Warden. "Why?" and he now looked round at his sister without a trace of irritability and smiled.

"Because Mrs. Jack Dashwood is coming here. I didn't mention it before. Well, the fact is she happens to have a few days' rest from her work in London. She is with some relative in Malvern and coming on here this afternoon."

"Mrs. Jack Dashwood!" repeated the Warden with evident indifference.

"Jack Dashwood's widow. You remember my John's nephew Jack? Poor Jack who was killed at Mons!"

Yes, the Warden remembered, and his face clouded as it always did when war was mentioned.

"May and he were engaged as boy and girl – and I think she stuck to it – because she thought she was in honour bound. Some women are like that – precious few; and some men."

The Warden listened without remark.

"And I am just going to telephone to Mr. Boreham," said Lady Dashwood, "to ask him to come in to dinner to meet her!"

"Boreham!" groaned the Warden, and he took up his pen from the table.

"I'm so sorry," said Lady Dashwood, "but he used to know May Dashwood, so we must ask him, and I thought it better to get him over at once and have done with it."

"Perhaps so," said the Warden, and he stretched out his left hand for paper. "Only – one never has done – with Boreham."

"Poor old Jim!" said Lady Dashwood, "and now, dear, you can get back to your book," and she moved away.

"Book!" grumbled the Warden. "It's business I have to do; and anyhow I don't see how anyone can write books now! Except prophecies of the future, admonitions, sketches of possible policies, heart-searchings."

Lady Dashwood moved away. "Well, that's what you're doing, dear," she said.

"I don't know," said the Warden gloomily, and he reached out his hand, pulling towards him some papers. "One seems to be at the beginning of things."

Lady Dashwood closed the door softly behind her.

"He's perplexed," she said to herself. "He is perplexed – not merely because we are at 'the beginning of things,' but because – I have been a fool and – " She did not finish the sentence. She went up early to her room and dressed for dinner.

It was impossible to be certain when May would come, so it would be better to get dressed and have the time clear. May's arrival was serious business – so serious that Lady Dashwood shuddered at the mere thought that it was by a mere stroke of extraordinary luck that she could come and would come! If May came by the six train she would arrive before seven.

But seven o'clock struck and May had not arrived. She might arrive about eight o'clock. Lady Dashwood, who was already dressed, gave orders that dinner was to be put off for twenty minutes, and then she telephoned this news to Mr. Boreham and sent in a message to the Warden. But she quite forgot to tell Gwen that dinner was to be later. Gwen had gone upstairs early to dress for dinner, for she was one of those individuals who take a long time to do the simplest thing. This omission on the part of Lady Dashwood, trifling as it seemed, had far-reaching consequences – consequences that were not foreseen by her. She sat in the drawing-room actively occupied in imagining obstacles that might prevent May Dashwood from keeping the promise in her telegram: railway accidents, taxi accidents, the unexpected sudden deaths of relatives. As she sat absorbed in these wholly unnecessary and exhausting speculations, the door opened and she heard Robinson's quavering voice make the delicious announcement, "Mrs. Dashwood!"