At tea two or three people called, but the Warden did not appear even for a hasty cup. At dinner an old pupil of the Warden's--lamed by the war--occupied the attention of the little party.

Gwen's spirits rose at the sight of a really young man, but she remembered her mother's admonition and did not make any attempt to attract his attention beyond opening her eyes now and then suddenly and widely and with an ecstasy of interest at some invisible object just above his head. Whether the youthful warrior's imagination was excited by this "pa.s.sage of arms" Gwen never knew, because the Warden took his pupil off to the library after dinner, and did not even bring him into the drawing-room to bid farewell.

In the quiet of the drawing-room Gwen fell into thought. She wondered whether the Warden expected her to come and knock on his library door and walk in and tell him that she really did want to be married to him?

Or had he read that letter and----? Why, she had thought all this over a hundred times, and was no farther on than she had been before.

After playing the Reverie by Slapovski, which Mrs. Dashwood had not yet heard, and which she expressed a desire to hear, Gwen settled down to knitting a sock. She had been knitting that sock for five months. It was surprising how small the foot was, at least the toe part; the heel indeed was ample. She had followed the directions with great care, and yet the stupid thing would come out wrong. It was irritating to see Mrs.

Dashwood knitting away at such a pace. It made Gwen giddy to look at her hands. Lady Dashwood took up a book and read pa.s.sages aloud. This was so intolerably dull that Gwen found it difficult to keep her eyes open. It is always more tiring when nothing is going on than when plenty of things are going on!

Lady Dashwood had just finished reading a pa.s.sage and looked up to make a remark to May Dashwood, when she became aware of Gwen's face.

"My dear, you looked just like a melancholy peach. Go to bed!"

Gwen smiled and tumbled her pins into her knitting. She rose and said "Good night," glad to be released. Outside the drawing-room she stood holding her breath to hear if there was any sound audible from the library. She heard nothing. She moved over the soft carpet and listened again, at the door. She could hear the Warden's deep, masculine voice--like the vibration of an organ, and then a higher voice, but what they said Gwen could not tell. She turned away and went up to bed. She was beginning to lose that feeling of not being afraid of the Warden. He was becoming more and more what he had been at first, an impressive and alarming personage, a human being entirely remote from her understanding and experience. At moments during dinner when she had glanced at him, he had seemed to her to be like a handsomely carved figure animated by some living force completely unknown to her. That such an incomprehensible being should become her husband was surely unlikely--if not impossible!

Gwen's thoughts became more and more confused. Notwithstanding this confusion in what (if compelled to describe it) she would have called her soul, she closed her eyes and settled upon her pillow. She was conscious that she was disappointed and not happy. Then she suddenly became indifferent to her fate--saw in her mind's eye a hat--it absorbed her. The hat was lying on a chair. It was trimmed like some other hat.

Then the hat disappeared, and Gwen was asleep.

As soon as Gwendolen had left the drawing-room Lady Dashwood closed her book and looked at her niece.

"Now," said Lady Dashwood, "I begin to think that I was unnecessarily alarmed about Jim. But it may be because you are here--giving me moral support." Lady Dashwood spoke the words "moral support" with great firmness. Having once said it and seen that it was wrong, she meant to stick to it.

"I wonder," began Mrs. Dashwood, and then she remained silent and looked hard at her knitting.

Lady Dashwood still stared at her niece. But May did not conclude her sentence, if indeed she had meant to say any more.

"Why, you haven't noticed anything?" asked Lady Dashwood.

"Nothing!" said May, and she knitted on.

"To-day," said Lady Dashwood, "Jim has been practically invisible except at meals, but you've no idea how busy he is just now. All one's old ideas are in the melting-pot," she went on, "and Jim has schemes. He is full of plans. He thinks there is much to be done, in Oxford, with Oxford--nothing revolutionary--but a lot that is evolutionary."

Mrs. Dashwood dropped her knitting to listen, though she could have heard quite well without doing this.

"Imagine!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood, with a little burst of anger, "what a man like Jim, a scholar, a man of business, an organiser, what on earth he would do with a wife like Gwendolen Scott! The idea is absurd."

"The absurd often happens," said May, and as she said this she took up her knitting again with such a jerk that her ball of wool tumbled to the floor and began rolling; and being a tight ball it rolled some distance sideways from May's chair in the direction of the far distant door. She gave the wool a little tug, but the ball merely shook itself, turned over and released still more wool.

"Very well, remain there if you prefer that place," said May, and as she spoke there came a slight noise at the door.

Both ladies looked to see who was coming in. It was the Warden. He held a cigar in his hand, a sign (Lady Dashwood knew it) that he intended merely to bid them "Good night," and retire again to his library. But he now stood in the half-light with his hand on the door, and looked towards the glow of the hearth where the two ladies sat alone, each lighted by a tall, electric candle stand on the floor. And as he looked at this little s.p.a.ce of light and warmth he hesitated.

Then he closed the door behind him and came in.

CHAPTER VI

MORE THAN ONE CONCLUSION

The Warden came slowly towards them over the wide s.p.a.ce of carpeted floor.

Lady Dashwood, who knew every pa.s.sing change in his face and manner (they were photographed over and over again in every imaginable style in her book of life), noticed that the sight of herself and May alone, that is, without Gwen--had made him decide to come in. She drew her own conclusions and smiled.

"When you pa.s.s that ball of wool, pick it up, Jim," she said.

She spoke too late, however, and the Warden kicked the ball with one foot, and sent it rolling under a chair. It took the opportunity of flinging itself round one leg, and tumbling against the second. With its remaining strength it rolled half way round the third leg, and then lay exhausted.

"I'm not going to apologise," said the Warden, in his most courteous tones.

"You needn't do that, my dear, if you don't want to," said Lady Dashwood. "But pick up the ball, please."

"If I pick the ball up," said the Warden, "the result will be disastrous to somebody."

He looked at the ball and at the chair, and then, putting his cigar between his teeth, he lifted the chair from the labyrinth of wool and placed it out of mischief. Then he picked up the ball and stood holding it in his hand. Who was the "somebody"? To whom did it belong? It was obvious to whom it belonged! A long line of wool dropped from the ball to the carpet. There it described a foolish pattern of its own, and then from one corner of that pattern the line of wool ran straight to Mrs.

Dashwood's hands. She was sitting there, pretending that she didn't know that she was very, very slowly and deliberately jerking out the very vitals of that pattern, in fact disembowelling it. Then the Warden pretended to discover suddenly that it was Mrs. Dashwood's ball, and this discovery obliged him to look at her, and she, without glancing at him, slightly nodded her head, very gravely. Lady Dashwood grasped her book and pretended to read it.

"I suppose I must clear up this mess," said the Warden, as articulately as a man can who is holding a cigar between his teeth.

He began to wind up the ball.

"How beautifully you are winding it!" said May Dashwood, without looking up from her knitting.

The Warden cleared the pattern from the floor, and now a long line of wool stretched tautly from his hands to those of Mrs. Dashwood.

"Please stop winding," she said quietly, and still she did not look up, though she might have easily done so for she had left off knitting.

The Warden stopped, but he stood looking at her as if to challenge her eyes. Then, as she remained obstinately unmoved, he came towards her chair and dropped the ball on her lap.

"You couldn't know I was winding it beautifully because you never looked."

"I knew without looking," said May. "I took for granted that you did everything well."

"If you will look now," said the Warden, "you will see how crookedly I've done it. So much for flattery."

He stood looking down at her bent head with its gold-brown hair lit up to splendour by the electric light behind her. Her face was slightly in shadow. The Warden stood so long that Lady Dashwood was seized with an agreeable feeling of embarra.s.sment. May Dashwood was apparently unconscious of the figure beside her. But she raised her eyebrows. Her eyebrows were often slightly raised as if inquiring into the state of the world with sympathy tinged with surprise. She raised her eyebrows instead of making any reply, as if she said: "I could make a retort, but I am far too busy with more important matters."

The Warden at last moved, and putting a chair between the two ladies he seated himself exactly opposite the glowing fire and the portrait above it. Leaning back, he smoked in silence for a few moments looking straight in front of him for the most part, only now and then turning his eyes to Mrs. Dashwood, just to find out if her eyebrows were still raised.

Lady Dashwood began smiling at her book because she had discovered that she held it upside down.

"You were interested in Stockwell?" said the Warden suddenly. "He is doing multifarious things now. He is an accomplished linguist, and we couldn't manage without him--besides he is over military age by a long way."

Lady Dashwood felt quite sure that his silence had been occupied by the Warden in thinking of May, so that his question, "You were interested,"

etc., was merely the point at which his thoughts broke into words.

"I was very much interested in him," said May. "It was like reading a witty book--only much more delightful."