Watersprings - Arthur Christopher Benson (short novels to read TXT) 📗

ravaged with age and decrepitude, and yet in his folly he had suggested this visit, and he had thrown the girl he loved out of her lonely life, craving for sympathy and interest, into a set of young men all apt for passion and emotion. The thought of Guthrie with his charm, his wealth, his aplomb, fell cold on his heart. Howard's swift imagination pictured the mutual attraction of the two, the enchanting discoveries, the laughing sympathy. Guthrie would, no doubt, come down to Windlow. It was exactly the kind of match that Mr. Sandys would like for Maud; and this was to be the end of this tragic affair. How was he to endure the rest of the days of the visit? This was Tuesday, and they were not to go till Saturday; and he would have to watch the budding of a romance which would end in his choosing Maud a wedding-present, and attending at Windlow Church in the character of the middle-aged squire, beaming through his glasses on the young people.

In such abject reflections the walk passed away. He crept into College by the side-entrance, settled down to his evening work with grim tenacity, and lost himself in desperate imaginings of all the pleasant things that might be happening to the party. They were to dine at a restaurant, he believed, and probably Guthrie would be free to join them.

Late that night Jack looked in. "Is anything the matter?" he said. "Why didn't you come to Guthrie's? Look here, you are going to play fair, aren't you? I can't do all the entertaining business myself. I really must have a day off to-morrow, and get some exercise."

"All right," said Howard, "I'll take them on. Suppose you bring them to luncheon here. And I will tell you what I will do. I will be responsible for to-morrow afternoon. Then on Thursday you shall come and dine here again; and on Friday I will try to get the Master to lunch--that will smooth things over a bit."

"Thanks very much," said Jack; "that's splendid! I wish we hadn't let ourselves in for quite so much. I'm not fit to lead a double life like this. I'm sure I don't grudge them their outing, but, by George, I shall be glad to see the last of them, and I daresay you will be too. It's the hardest work I've had for a long time."

The two came and lunched with Howard. After luncheon he said, "Now, I am absolutely free to-day--Jack has got a lawn-tennis match on--what shall we do?"

"Well," said Mr. Sandys genially, "I will be entirely selfish for once. I have come on the track of some very important matters in the Library, and I see they are going to take up my time. And then I am going in to have a cup of tea at Pembroke with the Dean, an old friend of mine. There, I make no excuses! I did suggest to Herries that I had a daughter with me; but he rather pointedly didn't ask her. Women are not in his line, and he will like a quiet talk with me. Now, what do you say to that, Howard?"

"Well, if Miss Maud will put up with me," said Howard, "we will stroll about, and we might go to King's Chapel together. I should like to show her that, and we will go to see Monica Graves, and get some tea there."

"Give Monica my love," said Mr. Sandys, "and make what excuses you can. Better tell her the truth for once! I will try to look in upon her before I go."

Maud assented very eagerly and gratefully. They walked together to the Library, and Mr. Sandys bolted in like a rabbit into its hole. Howard was alone with her.

She was very different, he thought, from what she had seemed that first night. She was alert, smiling, delighted with everything and everybody about the place. "I think it is all simply enchanting!" she said; "only it makes me long to go to Newnham. I think men do have a better time than women; and, what is more, no one here seems to have anything whatever to do!"

"That's only our unselfishness," said Howard. "We get no credit! Think of all the piles of papers that are accumulating on my table. The other day I entertained with all the virtue and self-sacrifice at my command a party of working-men from the East end of London at luncheon in my rooms, and took them round afterwards. They knew far more than I did about the place, and I cut a very poor figure. At the end the Secretary, meaning to be very kind to me, said that he was glad to have seen a glimpse of the cultured life. 'It is very beautiful and distinguished,' he added, 'but we of the democracy shall not allow it to continue. It is always said that the Dons have nothing to do but to read and sip their wine, and I am glad to see it all for myself. To think of all these endowments being used like this! Not but what we are very grateful to you for your kindness!'"

They strolled about. Cambridge is not a place that puts its characteristic beauties in the forefront. Some of the most charming things lurk unsuspected beyond dark entries and behind sombre walls. They penetrated little mouldering courts; they looked into dim and stately halls and chapels; they stood long on the bridge of Clare, gazing at that incomparable front, with all the bowery gardens and willow-shaded walks, like Camelot, beside the slow, terraced stream.

It was a tortured kind of delight for Howard to feel the girl beside him; but she showed no wish to talk intimately or emotionally. She asked many questions, and he could see that she drank in eagerly the beauty of the place, understanding its charm in a moment. They went in to see Monica, who was in a mood of dry equanimity, and rallied Howard on the success of his visit to Windlow. "I hear you entered on the scene like a fairy prince," she said, "and charmed an estate out of Cousin Anne in the course of a few hours. Isn't he magnificent, Maud? You mustn't think he is a typical Don: he is quite one of our brightest flowers."

"When am I to come again to Windlow?" she added; "I suppose I must ask Howard's leave now? He told me, you know," she said to Maud, "that he wanted a change--he was bored with his work; so I abandoned Aunt Anne to him; and he set up his flag in a moment. There are no diplomatists like these cultured and unworldly men, Maud! It was noble of me to do as I did. If I had exercised my persuasion on Aunt Anne, and kept Howard away, I believe she would have turned over Windlow to me, and I would have tried a social experiment there. It's just the place for an inebriate home; no public-houses, and plenty of fine spring water."

Maud was immensely amused by Monica. Howard contented himself by saying that he was much misinterpreted; and presently they went off to King's together.

Maud was not prepared for King's Chapel, and indeed the tame, rather clumsy exterior gives very little hint of the wonders within.

When they passed the swing-door, and saw the fine soaring lines leading to the exquisite intricacies of the roof, the whole air full of rich colour; the dark carved screen, with the gleaming golden trumpets of the angels on the organ, Howard could see her catch her breath, and grow pale for an instant at the crowded splendour of the place.

They sat in the nave; and when the thin bell died down, and the footsteps passed softly by, and the organ uttered its melodious voice as the white-robed procession moved slowly in, Howard could see that the girl was almost overcome by the scene. She looked at him once with a strange smile, a smile which he could not interpret; and as the service slowly proceeded--to Howard little more than a draught of sweet sensation--he could see that Maud was praying earnestly, deeply, for some consecration of hope and strength which he could not divine or guess at.

As they came away, she hardly spoke--she seemed tired and almost rapt out of herself. She just said, "Ah, I am glad I came here with you. I shall never forget this as long as I live--it is quite beyond words."

He took her back to the lodgings where they were staying. She shook hands with him, smiled faintly, almost tearfully, and went in without a word. Howard went back in a very agitated frame of mind. He did not understand what was in the girl's mind at all. She was different, utterly different. Some new current of thought had passed through her mind. He fancied that the girl, after her secluded life, with so many richly perceptive faculties half starved, had awakened almost suddenly to a sense of the crowded energies and joys of life, that youth and delight had quickened in her; that she foresaw new relations, and guessed at wonderful secrets. But it troubled him to think that she had not seemed to wish to revive their former little intimacy; she had seemed half unconscious of his presence, and all alive with new pleasures and curiosities. The marvellous veil of sex appeared to have fallen between them. He had made friends with her, as he would have made friends with some ingenuous boy; and now something wholly new, mysterious, and aloof had intervened.

The rest of the visit was uneventful enough. Maud was different--that was plain--not less delightful, indeed even more so, in her baffling freshness; but Howard felt removed from her, shut out from her mind, kept at arm's length, even superseded.

The luncheon with the Master as guest was a success. He was an old bachelor clergyman, white-haired, dainty, courteous, with the complexion of a child. He was very gracious to Mr. Sandys, who regarded him much as he might have regarded the ghost of Isaiah, as a spirit who visited the earth from some paradisiacal retreat, and brought with him a fragrance of heaven. The thought of a Doctor of Divinity, the Head of a College, full of academical learning, and yet perfectly courteous and accessible, filled Mr. Sandys' cup of romance to the brim. He seemed to be storing his memory with the Master's words. The Master was delighted with Maud, and treated her with a charming and indulgent gaiety, which Howard envied. He asked her opinion, he deferred to her, he made her come and sit next to him, he praised Jack and Howard, and at the end of the luncheon he filled Mr. Sandys with an almost insupportable delight by saying that the next time he could visit Cambridge he hoped he would stay at the Lodge--"but not unless you will promise to bring Miss Sandys as well--Miss Sandys is indispensable." Howard felt indeed grateful to the gallant and civil old man, who had so clear an eye for what was tender and beautiful. Even Jack, when the Master departed, was forced to say that he did not know that the old man had so much blood in him!

That night Mr. Sandys finished up his princely progress by dining in Hall with the Fellows, and going to the Combination Room afterwards. He was not voluble, as Howard had expected. He was overcome with deference, and seized with a desire to bow in all directions at the smallest civility. He sat next to the Vice-Master, and Mr. Redmayne treated him to an exhibition of the driest fireworks on