The New Warden. Ritchie David George
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!"
CHAPTER II
MORAL SUPPORT
May Dashwood's features were not faultless. For instance, her determined little nose was rather short and just a trifle retroussé and her eyebrows sometimes looked a little surprised. Her great charm lay not in her clear complexion and her bright brown hair, admirable as they were, but in her full expressive grey eyes, and when she smiled, it was not the toothy smile of professional gaiety, but a subtle, archly animated and sympathetic smile; so that both men and women who were once smiled at by her, immediately felt the necessity of being smiled at again!
May was still dressed in mourning, very plainly, and she wore no furs. She came into the room and looked round her.
"May!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood.
"I thought you were ill, Aunt Lena!" said May amazed at the sight of Lady Dashwood, dressed for dinner and apparently in robust health.
"I am ill," exclaimed Lady Dashwood, and she tapped her forehead. "I'm ill here," and she advanced to meet her niece with open arms.
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Dashwood, hastening up to her aunt.
"I'm still partially sane, May – but – if you hadn't come!" said Lady Dashwood, kissing her niece on both cheeks. She did not finish her sentence.
Mrs. Dashwood put both hands on her aunt's shoulders and examined her face carefully.
"Yes, I see you're quite sane, Aunt Lena."
"Will you minister to a mind – not actually diseased but oppressed by a consuming worry?" asked Lady Dashwood earnestly. "Don't think I'm a humbug – I need you much more, just now, than if I'd been merely ill – with a bilious attack, say. You've saved my life! I wish I could explain – but it is difficult to explain – sometimes."
"I'm glad I've saved your life," said May, and she smiled her peculiar smile.
"I see victory – the battle won – already," said Lady Dashwood, looking at her intently. "I wish I could explain – "
"Let it ooze out, Aunt Lena. I can stay for three days – if you want – if I can really do anything for you – "
"Can't you stay a week?" asked Lady Dashwood. "May, I'm not joking. I want your presence badly – can't you spare the time? Relieve my mind, dear, at once, by telling me you can!"
Lady Dashwood's face suddenly became puckered and her voice was so urgent that May's smile died away.
"If it is really important I'll stay a week. Nothing wrong about you – or – Uncle John?" May looked into her aunt's eyes.
"No!" said Lady Dashwood. "John doesn't like my being away. An old soldier has much to make him sad now, but no – " Then she added in an undertone, "Jim …" and she stared into her niece's face.
Under the portrait of that bold, handsome, unscrupulous Warden of King's a faithful clock ticked to the passing of time. The time it showed now was twenty minutes to eight. Both ladies in silence had turned to the fire and they were now both standing each with one foot on the fender and were looking up at the portrait and not at the clock. Neither of them, however, thought of the portrait. They merely looked at it – as one must look at something.
"Jim," sighed Lady Dashwood. "You don't know him, May."
"Is it he who is ill?" asked May.
"He's not ill. He is terribly depressed at times because so many of his old pupils are gone – for ever. But it's not that, not that that I mean. You know what learned men are, May?" Lady Dashwood did not ask a question, she was making an assertion.
May Dashwood still gazed at the portrait but now she lowered her eyelids, looking critically through the narrowed space with her grey eyes.
"No, I don't know what learned men are," she replied very slowly. "I have met so few."
"Jim has taken – " and again Lady Dashwood hesitated.
"Not to Eau Perrier?" almost whispered Mrs. Dashwood.
"Certainly not," exclaimed Lady Dashwood. "I don't think