The New Warden Part 42

"This motto," continued Bingham, "isn't for ornament but for an example.

In short, my dear man, we avoid what I might call, for want of a more comprehensive term, the Pot-house Experience of life."

Boreham threw back his head.

"Well, you'll take the job, will you?" and Bingham released his arm.

"Can't you get one of those elderly ladies who frequent lectures during their lifetime to do the job?"

"We may be reduced to that," said Bingham, "but even they are busy. It's a nice job," he added enticingly.

"I know what it will be like," grunted Boreham, and he hesitated. If May Dashwood had been staying on in Oxford it would have been different, but she was going away. So Boreham hesitated.

"Telephone me this evening, will you?" said Bingham.

"Very well," said Boreham. "I'll see what I have got on hand, and if I have time----" and so the two men parted.

Boreham got into his gig with a heavy heart and drove back to Chartcote.

How he hated the avenue that cut him off from the world outside. How he hated the clean smell of the country that came into his windows. How he hated to see the moon, when it glinted at him from between the tops of trees. He longed for streets, for the odour of dirt and of petrol and of stale-cooked food.

The noise of London soothed him, the jostling of men and women; he hungered for it. And yet he did not love those human beings. He knew their weaknesses, their superst.i.tions, their follies, their unreason!

Boreham remembered a much over-rated Hebrew (possibly only a mythical figure) who once said to His followers that when they prayed they should say: "Father, forgive us our trespa.s.ses as we forgive them that trespa.s.s against us."

He got out of his gig slowly. "I don't forgive them," he said, and, unconscious of his own sins, he walked up the steps into his lonely house.

CHAPTER XXIII

BY MOONLIGHT

May waited within the gates of the Lodgings for some moments. She did not open the door and enter the house. She walked up and down on the gravelled court. She wanted to be alone, to speak to no one just now; her heart was full of weariness and loneliness.

When she felt certain that Boreham was safely away, she went to the gates and out into the narrow street again, where she could hear subdued sounds of the evening traffic of the city.

The dusky streets had grown less dim; the s.h.i.+ning overhead was more luminous as the moon rose.

The old buildings, as she pa.s.sed them on her solitary walk, looked mysterious and aloof, as if they had been placed there magically for some secret purpose and might vanish before the dawn. This was the ancient Oxford, the Oxford of the past, the Oxford that was about to pa.s.s away, leaving priceless memories of learning and romance behind it, something that could never be again quite what it had been. Before dawn would it vanish and something else, still called Oxford, would be standing there in its place?

May was tempted to let her imagination wander thus, and to see in this mysterious Oxford the symbol of the personality of a single man, a personality that haunted her when she was alone, a personality which, when it stood before her in flesh and blood, seemed to fill s.p.a.ce and obliterate other objects.

She had, in the chapel, re-affirmed over and over again her resolution to overcome this obsession, and now, as she walked that evening, her heart cried out for indulgence just for one brief moment, for permission to think of this personality, and to read details of it in every moonlit facade of old Oxford, in every turn of the time-worn lanes and pa.s.sages.

The temptation had come upon her, because it was so dreary to be loved by Boreham. His talk seemed to mark her spiritual loneliness with such poignant insistence; it made it so desperately plain to her that those sharp cravings of her heart could not be satisfied except by one man. It had made her see, for the first time, that the sacred dead, to whom she had raised a shrine, was a memory and not a present reality to her; and this thought only added to her confusion and her grief.

What was there to hold on to in life?

"O, put thy trust in G.o.d!" came the answer.

"Help me to make the mischance of my life a motive for greater moral effort. Help me to be a willing sacrifice and not an unwilling victim."

And as she uttered these words she moved with more rapid steps.

Shadows were visible on the roadway; roofs glimmered and the edges of the deep window recesses were tinged with a dark silver. She pa.s.sed under the walls of All Souls and emerged again into the High. A figure she recognised confronted her. She tried to pa.s.s it without appearing to be aware of it, and she hurried on with bent head. But it turned, and Bingham's voice spoke to her.

"Mrs. Dashwood," he called softly.

She was forced to slacken her pace. "Oh, Mr. Bingham!" she said, and he came and walked by her, making pretence that he was disturbing her solitude because he had never been told the dinner-hour at the Lodgings, when Lady Dashwood invited him, and, what was more important, he had forgotten to say that he would be very glad if Mrs. Dashwood would make use of him as a cicerone if she wanted any more sight-seeing in Oxford and the Warden was unable to accompany her. This was the pretence he put before her.

Then, when he had said all this and had walked a few yards along the street with her, he seemed to forget that his business with her ought to be over, and remarked that he had been trying to save Boreham's soul.

"His soul!" said May, with a sigh.

"I've been trying to make him work."

"Doesn't he work?" asked May.

"No, he preaches," said Bingham. "If he had a touch of genius he might invent some attractive system of ethics in which his own characteristics would be the right characteristics; some system in which humility and patience would take a back seat."

May could not help smiling a little, Bingham's voice was so smooth and soft; but she felt Boreham's loneliness again and ceased smiling.

"Or he might invent a new G.o.d," said Bingham, "a sort of composite photograph of himself and the old G.o.ds. He might invent a new creed to go along with it and d.a.m.n all the old creeds. But he is incapable of construction, so he merely preaches the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, which is a soft job. Wherever he is, there is Sodom and Gomorrah! You see my point? Egotism is always annoyed at egotisms. An egotist always sees the egotism of other people. The egotism of those round him, jump at him, they get on his nerves! He has to love people who are far, far away! You see my point? Well, I've been trying to make him take on a small bit of war work!"

"And will he take it?" asked May.

"I don't know," said Bingham; "I've just left him, a prey to conflicting pa.s.sions."

May was silent.

"Are you going back to King's?" asked Bingham.

She and Bingham were walking along, just as she and Boreham had been walking along the same street, past these same colleges not an hour ago.

Was she going back to the Lodgings? Yes, she thought, in fact she knew she was going back to the Lodgings.

"May I see you to the Lodgings?" asked Bingham.

There seemed no alternative but to say "Yes."

"There are many things I should like to talk over with you, Mrs.

Dashwood," said Bingham, stepping out cheerfully. "I should like to roam the universe with you."

"I'm afraid you would find me very ignorant," said May.

"I would present you with facts. I would sit at your feet and hold them out for your inspection, and you, from your throne above, would p.r.o.nounce judgment on them."

"It is the ignorant people who always do p.r.o.nounce judgment," said May.

"So that will be all right. You spoke of Mr. Boreham preaching. Well, I've just been preaching. It's a horrid habit."

Bingham gave one of his surprising and most cultured explosions of laughter. May turned and looked at him with her eyebrows very much raised.