"I'm quite sorry," she whispered, "to find that your Aunt Lena seems worried about the engagement. Now why on earth, oh why, did the Warden run himself into an engagement with a girl he doesn't really care about?"

This question was a master-stroke. There was no getting out of this for May Dashwood. Mrs. Potten clapped her hand over her mouth and drew in a breath. Then she listened breathless for the answer. The answer must either be: "But he _does_ really care about her," or something evasive.

Not only Mrs. Potten's emotional superficies but her core of flint feared the emphatic answer, and yearned for an evasive one. What was it to be?

May's face had suddenly blanched. Had her Aunt Lena told? No--surely not; and yet Mrs. Potten seemed to _know_.

"How can I tell, Mrs. Potten?" said May, unsteadily. "I----"

"Evasive!" said Mrs. Potten to herself triumphantly.

"Never mind! things do happen," she said, interrupting May. "I suppose, at any rate, he has to make the best of it, now it's done."

Mrs. Potten was afraid that she was now going too far, and she swiftly turned the subject sideways before May had time to think out a reply.

"Tell your Aunt Lena that I expect Gwendolen, without fail, after lunch.

Please tell her; so kind of you! Good-bye, good-bye," and Mrs. Potten got fiercely into her car.

"Well, I never!" she said, and she said it over and over again. A cloud of thoughts seemed to float with her as the car skimmed along the road, and through that cloud seemed to peer at her, though somewhat dimly, the "beaux yeux" of the Warden of King's.

"I think I shall," said Mrs. Potten, "I think I shall; but I shall make certain first--absolutely certain--first."

CHAPTER XXII

MR. BOREHAM'S PROPOSAL

Boreham's purpose had been thwarted for the moment. But there was still time for him to make another effort, and this time it was to be a successful effort.

A letter to May would have been the easiest way in which to achieve his purpose, but Boreham shrank from leaving to posterity a written proposal of marriage, because there always was just the chance that such a letter might not be answered in the right spirit, and in that case the letter would appear to future readers of Boreham's biography as an unsolicited testimonial in favour of marriage--as an inst.i.tution. So Boreham decided to continue "feeling" his way!

After all, there was not very much time in which to feel the way, for May was leaving Oxford on Monday. To-day was Friday, and Boreham knew the King's party were going to chapel at Magdalen. If he went, too, it would be possible for him to get May to himself on the way back to the Lodgings (in the dark).

So to Magdalen he went, hurrying along on that Friday afternoon, and the nearer he got to Magdalen the more sure he was that only fools lived in the country; the more convinced he was that Chartcote had become, even in three months, a hateful place.

Boreham was nearly late, he stumbled into the ante-chapel just as they were closing the doors with solemn insistence. He uncovered his head as he entered, and his nostrils were struck with a peculiar odour of stone and mortar; a sense of s.p.a.ce around him and height above him; also with the warmth of some indefinable sense of community of purpose that annoyed him. He was, indeed, already warm enough physically with his haste in coming; he was also spiritually in a glow with the consciousness of his own magnanimity and toleration. Here was the enlightened Boreham entering a temple where they repeated "Creeds outworn." Here he was entering it without any exhibition of violent hostility or even of contempt. He was entering it decorously, though not without some speed. He was warm and did not wish to be made warmer.

What he had not antic.i.p.ated, and what disappointed him, was that from the ante-chapel he could not see whether the Dashwoods were in the Chapel or not. The screen and organ loft were in the way, they blocked his vision, and not having any "permit" for the Chapel, he had to remain in the ante-chapel, and just hope for the best. He seated himself as near to the door as he could, on the end of the back bench, already crowded. There he disposed of his hat and prepared himself to go through with the service.

Boreham did not, of course, follow the prayers or make any responses; he merely uttered a humming noise with the object of showing his mental aloofness, and yet impressing the fact of his presence on the devout around him.

Many a man who has a conscientious objection to prayer, likes to hear himself sing. But Boreham's singing voice was not altogether under his own control. It was as if the machinery that produced song was mislaid somewhere down among his digestive organs and had got rusted, parts of it being actually impaired.

It had been, in his younger days, a source of regret to Boreham that he could never hope to charm the world by song as well as by words. As he grew older that regret faded, and was now negligible.

Is there any religious service in the world more perfect than evensong at Magdalen? Just now, in the twilight of the ante-chapel, a twilight faintly lit above at the spring of the groined roof, the voices of the choir rose and fell in absolute unison, with a thrill of subdued complaint; a complaint uttered by a Hebrew poet dead and gone these many years, a complaint to the G.o.d of his fathers, the only true G.o.d.

Boreham marked time (slightly out of time) muttering--

"Tum/tum tum/ti: Tum/tum tum/tum ti/tum?"

loud enough to escape the humiliation of being confounded with those weak-minded strangers who are carried away (in spite of their reason) by the charm of sacerdotal blandishments.

He stood there among the ordinary church-goers, conscious that he was a free spirit. He was happy. At least not so much happy as agreeably excited by the contrast he made with those around him, and excited, too, at what was going to happen in about half an hour. That is, if May Dashwood was actually behind that heavy absurd screen in the Chapel. He went on "tum-ing" as if she was there and all was well.

And within the chapel, in one of those deep embrasures against the walls, was May Dashwood. But she was alone. Lady Dashwood had been too tired to come with her, and Gwendolen had been hurried off to Potten End immediately after lunch, strangely reluctant to go. So May had come to the Chapel alone, and, not knowing that Boreham was in the ante-chapel waiting for her, she had some comfort in the seclusion and remoteness of that sacred place. Not that the tragedy of the world was shut out and forgotten, as it is in those busy market-places where men make money and listen too greedily to the c.h.i.n.k of coin to hear any far-off sounds from the plain of Armageddon. May got comfort, not because she had forgotten the tragedy of the world and was soothed by soft sounds, but because that tragedy was remembered in this hour of prayer; because she was listening to the cry of the Hebrew poet, uttered so long ago and echoed now by distressful souls who feel just as he felt the desperate problem of human suffering and the desire for peace.

"Why art thou so vexed, O my soul; And why art thou so disquieted within me?"

And then the answer; an answer which to some is meaningless, but which, to the seeker after the "things that are invisible," is the only answer--the answer that the soul makes to itself--

"O put thy trust in G.o.d!"

May observed no one in the Chapel; she saw nothing but the written words in the ma.s.sive Prayer-book on the desk before her; and when at last the service was over, she came out looking neither to right nor left, and was startled to find herself emerging into the fresh air with Boreham by her side, claiming her company back to the Lodgings.

It was just dusk and the moon was rising in the east. Though it could not be seen, its presence was visible in the thin vaporous lightness of the sky. The college buildings stood out dimly, as if seen by a pallid dawn.

"You leave Oxford on Monday?" began Boreham, as they went through the entrance porch out into the High and turned to the right.

"Yes," said May, and a sigh escaped her. That Boreham noticed.

"I don't deny the attractions of Oxford," he said. "All I object to is its pretensions."

"You don't like originality," murmured May.

She was thinking of the slums of London where she worked. What a contrast with this n.o.ble street! Why should men be allowed to build dens and hovels for other men to live in? Why should men make ugliness and endure squalor?

"I thought you knew me better," said Boreham, reproachfully, "than to say that."

"If you do approve of originality," said May, "then why not let Oxford work out its own evolution, in its own way?"

"It needs entire reconstruction," said Boreham, stubbornly.

"You would like to pa.s.s everything through a mill and turn it out to a pattern," said May. "But that's not the way the world progresses. Entire reconstruction would spoil Oxford. What it wants is what we all want--the pruning of our vices and the development of our virtues. We don't want to be shorn of all that makes up our personality."

Boreham said, "That is a different matter; but why should we argue?"

"To leave Oxford and speak of ourselves, of you and me," said May, persisting. "You don't want to be made like me; but we both want to have the selfishness squeezed out of us. There! I warn you that, having once started, I shall probably go on lamenting like the prophet Jeremiah until I reach the Lodgings! So if you want to escape, do find some pressing engagement. I shan't be offended in the very least."

How she longed for him to go! But was he capable of discovering this even when it was broadly hinted?

Boreham's beard moved irritably. The word "selfish" stung him. There was no such thing as being "unselfish"--one man wanted one thing, another man wanted another--and there you are!

"Human nature is selfish," he retorted. "Saints are selfish. They want to have a good time in the next world. Each man always wants to please himself, only tastes differ."