And yet all the time he was more and more haunted by the thought of Maud. He could not get her out of his head. Over and over again he lived through the scenes of their meetings. Against the background of the dusk, that slender figure outlined itself, the lines of her form, her looks, her smiles; he went again and again through his talks with her—the walk on the down, the sight of her in the dimly-lighted room; he could hear the very tones of her low voice, and see the childlike appeal of her eyes. Worst of all the scene at the Vicarage, the book held in her slender fingers, her look of bewilderment and distress—what a pompous ass he had been, how stupid and coarse! He thought of writing to her; he did write—but the dignified patronage of his elder-brotherly style sickened him, and he tore up his unfinished letter. Why could he not simply say that he cared for her, and was miserable at having hurt her? That was just, he thought, what he must not do; and yet the idea that she might be making other friends and acquaintances was a jealous horror to him. He thought of writing to his aunt about it—he did write regularly to her, but he could not explain what he had done. Strangest of all, he hardly recognised it as love. He did not face the idea of a possible life with Maud. It was to be an amiable and brotherly relation, with a frank confidence and an outspoken affection. He lost his old tranquil spirits in these reveries. It was painful to him to find how difficult it was becoming to talk to the undergraduates; his mild and jocose ironies seemed to have deserted him. He saw little of Jack; they were elaborately unaffected with each other, but each felt that there had been a sort of exposure, and it seemed impossible to regain the old relation.

One morning he had an unpleasant surprise. The Dean of the College, Mr. Gretton, a tall, rather grimly handsome man, who was immensely conscientious and laborious, and did his work as well as a virtuous man could, who was not interested in education, and frankly bored by the irresponsibility of undergraduates, walked into his rooms one morning and said, "I hope I don't interrupt you? I want to have a word with you about Sandys, as he is your cousin. There was a dinner in College last night—a club, I think—Guthrie and that lot—and Sandys got undeniably drunk. They were making a horrible row about two o'clock, and I went down and dispersed them. There were some outside men there whose names I took; but Sandys was quite out of control, and spoke very impertinently to me. He must come and apologise, or I shall ask that he may be sent down. He is a respectable man on the whole, so I shall not push it to extremes. But he will be gated, of course, and I shall write to his father. I thought you had better see him, and try if you can do anything. It is a great nuisance, and the less said about it the better; but of course we can't stand this kind of thing, and it had better be stopped at once."

"Yes, I will see him at once," said Howard. "I am very sorry. I did not think he would play the fool like that."

"One never knows!" said the Dean; "to speak plainly, I don't think he is doing much good here. Rather too much a man of the world for my taste. But there is nothing particular against him, and I don't want to be hard on him."

Howard sent for Jack at once. He came in, in an obviously rebellious frame of mind.

"I know," he said. "Yes, of course I was a fool; but it isn't worth making a row about. I don't go in for soaking, like some of the men who don't get caught, and I have no intention of going to the bad, if that is what you mean."

"You are an ass!" said Howard, "a real ass! Now don't say a word yet, till I have told you what I think. You may have your say afterwards. I don't care twopence about your getting drunk once in a way. It's a stupid thing to do, to my mind, and I don't see the point of it. I don't consider you a reprobate, nor am I going to take a high line about drunkenness; I know perfectly well that you are no more likely to take to drink than the Master is. But it isn't good enough. You put yourself on the wrong side, you give people a wrong idea of yourself. You get disapproved of by all the stupid and ordinary people who don't know you. Your father will be in an awful state of mind. It's an experiment, I suppose? I imagine you thought you would like to see how it felt to be drunk? Well, living at close quarters like this, that sort of thing can't be done. And then you were rude to Gretton. What's the point of that? He is a very good fellow, minds his own business, doesn't interfere, and keeps things very straight here. That part of it seems to me simply ungentlemanly. And in any case, you have no business to hurt the people who care for you, even if you think they ought not to be distressed. I don't say it is immoral, but I say it is a low business from beginning to end."

Jack, who bore signs of his overnight experience, gave Howard a smile. "That's all right!" he said. "I don't object to that! You have rather taken the wind out of my sails. If you had said I was a sensual brute, I should have just laughed. It is such NONSENSE the way these men go on! Why I was lunching with Gretton the other day, and Corry told a story about Wordsworth as an undergraduate getting drunk in Milton's rooms at Christ's, and how proud the old man was of it to the end of his life. Gretton laughed, and thought it a joke; and then when one gets roaring drunk, they turn up their eyes and say it is unmanly and so on. Why can't they stick to one line? If you go to bump-suppers and dinners, and just manage to carry your liquor, they think you a good sort of fellow, with no sort of nonsense about you—'a little natural boyish excitement'—you know the sort of rot. One glass more, and you are among the sinners."

"I know," said Howard, "and I perceive that I have had the benefit of your thought-out oration after all!"

Jack smiled rather sheepishly, and then said, "Well, what's to be done? Am I to be sent down?"

"Not if you do the right thing," said Howard. "You must just go to Gretton and say you are very sorry you got drunk, and still more sorry you were impertinent. If you can contrive to show him that you think him a good fellow, and are really vexed to have been such a bounder, so much the better. That I leave to your natural eloquence. But you will be gated, and he will write to your father."

Jack whistled. "I say, can't you stop that?" he said. "Father will be fearfully upset."

"No, I can't," said Howard, "and I wouldn't if I could. This is the music, and you have got to face it."

"Very well," said Jack rather glumly, "I suppose I must pay the score. I'll go and grovel to Gretton. I was simply beastly to him. My frank nature expanded in his presence."

Howard laughed. "Well, be off with you!" he said. "And I will tell you what. I will write to your father, and tell him what I think."

"Then it will be all right," said Jack, greatly relieved. "Anything to stop the domestic howl. I'll write too. After all, it is rather convenient to have a cousin among the Dons; and, anyhow, you have had your innings now. I was a fool, I admit. It won't happen again."

Howard wrote at once to the Vicar, and was rewarded by a long and grateful letter. "It is a disreputable affair," he wrote, "and it has upset me very much, and Maud even more. But you have put it in the right light, and I am very grateful to you for your good offices. I couldn't have believed it of Jack, but I look back to dear old Pembroke, and I remember there was one occasion—but I need not revive ancient memories, and I am sufficiently versed in human nature not to waste indignation over a boyish escapade. I have ventured to address letters to Mr. Gretton and the Master on the subject, apologising for Jack's misdemeanour, and saying how much I appreciate the excellence of the tone that prevails in the College."

What, however, pleased Howard still more was that Gretton spoke to him after Hall and said, "I am much obliged to you, Kennedy, for your prompt action. Sandys came and apologised to me in a very proper manner, and entirely removed the disagreeable impression from my mind. I owe this to your kindly intervention; and I must honestly say that I thought well of Sandys. He did not attempt to excuse himself, or to extenuate his fault. He showed very good feeling, and I believe that henceforth his influence will be on the side of order. I was really pleased with him."

Howard spoke to Jack again the following day, and said he was glad he had done the thing thoroughly.

"Thoroughly?" said Jack; "I should think I did. I fairly licked the old man's boots. We had quite an affecting scene. I rather think he gave me his blessing, and I went away feeling that I had been almost recommended to repeat my performance. Gretton's a sensible man. This is a good College. The thing would have been mismanaged anywhere else; but now I have not only an unblemished character, but I am like gold tried in the furnace."

"One more thing," said Howard; "why not get your people to come up for two or three days? It will clear off the whole affair. I think they would like to be asked, and I should be very glad to help to look after them."

"It will be a bore," said Jack, making a grimace; "it wrecks my health to take people round to King's and Trinity. It simply knocks me up; but I expect you are right, and I will ask them. You won't fail me? When I go off duty, you will go on? If that is clearly understood, they shall come. I know Maud would like to realise my background, as she says; and my father will rush to the 'Varsity Library, and break the spirit of the Pemmer Dons. He'll have the time of his life; but he deserves a treat—he really wrote me a very decent letter. By George, though, these emotional experiences are not in my line, though they reveal the worth of suffering, as the Chaplain said in his Hospital Sermon last Sunday."

Howard wrote a further note, saying that he hoped that Mr. Sandys and Maud would be able to come; and it was soon arranged that they should spend the inside of a week at Cambridge, before the May week, as the Vicar said he had little taste for social pleasures, and had some matters of considerable importance to turn up in the Library, to say nothing of the intellectual stimulus he anticipated.



XVI

THE VISIT

THE visit began on the usual lines of such visits, the home team, so to speak—Howard and Jack—having to fit a round of festivities into a life which under normal circumstances was already, if anything, too full, with the result that, at all events, Howard's geniality was tense, and tended to be forced. Only in youth can one abandon oneself to high spirits; as one grows older one desires more to contemplate one's own mirth, and assure oneself that it is genuine.

Jack met them at the station, and they had tea in his rooms, Howard refusing firmly to come.

"You must just give them a chance of a private word or two!" he said.

"Why, that's exactly what I want to avoid!" said Jack. "Besides, my family is never private—we haven't any company manners. But I expect you are right. Father will want one innings, and I think it's fair he should have it!"

They were, however, to dine with Howard, who, contrary to his wont, lavished some care on flowers and decorations, to make the place unobtrusively pretty and home-like, and he determined that he would be as quiet and straightforward as he could, but promised himself at least one afternoon with Maud strolling round the place. But this was all to happen as if by chance, and with no scheming or diplomacy.

They came; and Howard saw at once that Maud was timid and somewhat out of spirits; she looked tired, and this, so far from diminishing her charm, seemed to Howard to make it almost intolerably appealing to him. He would have desired to take her in his arms, like a child, to pet and caress her into happiness. Jack was evidently feeling the weight of his responsibilities, and was frankly bored; but never had Howard been more grateful for Mr. Sandys' flow of spirits than he was that evening. Mr. Sandys was thirsting for experience and research, and he was also in a state of jubilant sentimentality about Cambridge and his old recollections. He told stories of the most unemphatic kind in the most emphatic way, and Howard was amused at the radiant hues with which the lapse of time had touched the very simplest incidents of his career. Mr. Sandys had been, it seemed, a terrible customer at Cambridge—disobedient, daring, incisive, the hero of his contemporaries, the dread of the authorities; but all this on high-minded lines. Moreover, he had brought with him a note-book of queries, to be settled in the Library; while he had looked up in the list of residents everyone with whom he had been in the remotest degree acquainted, and a long vista of calls opened out before him. It was a very delightful evening to Howard, in spite of everything, simply because Maud was there; and he found himself extraordinarily conscious of her presence, observant of all she said and did, glad that her eyes should rest upon his familiar setting; and when they sat afterwards in his study and smoked, he saw that her eyes travelled with a curious intentness over everything—his books, his papers, his furniture. He had no private talk with her; but he was glad just to meet her glance and hear her low replies—glad too to find that, as the evening wore on, she seemed less distraite and tired.

They went off early, Mr. Sandys pleading fatigue for Maud, and the necessity for himself of a good night's rest, that he might ride forth on the following day conquering and to conquer.

The next day they lunched with Jack. When Howard came into the room he was not surprised to find that two undergraduates had been asked—Jack's chief allies. One was a big, good-humoured young man, who was very shy and silent; the other was one Fred Guthrie, who was one of the nicest men in the College; he was a Winchester boy, son of a baronet, a Member of Parliament, wealthy and distinguished. Guthrie had a large allowance, belonged to all the best clubs, played cricket with the chance of a blue ahead of him, and had, moreover, a real social gift. He had a quite unembarrassed manner and, what is rare in a young man, a strong sense of humour. He was a prominent member of the A. D. C., and had a really artistic gift of mimicry; but there was no touch of forwardness or conceit about him. He had been in for some examination or other; and when Howard came in he was describing his experiences. "What sort of questions?" he was saying. "Oh, you know the kind—an awful quotation, followed by the question, 'Who said this, and under what circumstances, and why did they let him?'" He made himself entirely at home, he talked to Mr. Sandys as if he were welcoming an old family friend, and he was evidently much attracted by Maud, who found it remarkably easy to talk to this pleasant and straightforward boy. He described with much liveliness an interview between Jack and the Master on the subject of reading the lessons in chapel, and imitated the suave tones of that courteous old gentleman to the life. "Far be it from me to deny it was dramatic, Mr. Sandys, but I should prefer a slightly more devotional tone." He related with great good-humour how a heavy, well-meaning, and rather censorious undergraduate had waited behind in his room on an evening when he had been entertaining the company with some imitations, and had said, "You are fond of imitating people, Guthrie, and you do it a great deal; but you ought to say who it is you are imitating, because one can't be quite sure!"

Mr. Sandys was immensely amused by the young man, and had related some of his own experiences in elocution—how his clerk on the first occasion of reading the lesson at Windlow was reported to have said, "Why, you might think he had been THERE, in a manner of speaking."

Guthrie was not in the least concerned to keep the conversation in his own hands, and received Mr. Sandys' stories with exactly the right amount of respectful interest and amusement. But the result of all this upon Howard was to make him feel extraordinarily heavy and elderly. He felt that he and Mr. Sandys were the make-weights of the party, and he was conscious that his own contributions were wanting in liveliness.

Maud was extraordinarily amused by the bits of mimicry that came in, because it was so well done that it inspired everyone with the feeling that mimicry was the one art worth practising; and Mr. Sandys himself launched into dialect stories, in which Somersetshire rustics began by saying, "Hoots, mon!" and ended by saying, "The ould divil hissilf."

After luncheon it became clear that Jack had given up the afternoon as a bad job, and suggested that they should all go down to the river. The rowing man excused himself, and Howard followed his example, pleading occupation of a vague kind. Mr. Sandys was enchanted at the prospect, and they went off in the charge of Guthrie, who was free, promising to return and have tea in his rooms. Guthrie, who was a friend of Howard's, included him in the invitation, but Howard said that he could not promise, but would look in if he could.

As a matter of fact, he went out for a lonely walk, ashamed of himself for his stupidity. He could not put himself in the position, he dismally thought, of competing for Maud's attention.

He walked off round by Madingley, hardly aware of what road he was taking. By the little chalk-pit just outside the village a rustic pair, a boy and girl, stood sheepishly clasped in a dull and silent embrace. Howard, to whom public exhibitions of emotion were distasteful, walked swiftly by with averted eyes, when suddenly a poignant thought came on him, causing him to redden up to the roots of his hair, and walk faster than ever. It was this, then, that was the matter with him—he was in love, he was jealous, he was the victim of the oldest, simplest, commonest, strongest emotion of humanity. His eyes were opened. How had he not seen it before? His broodings over the thought of Maud, the strange disturbance that came on him in her presence, that absurd desire to do or say something impressive, coupled with that wretched diffidence that kept him silent and helpless—it was love! He became half dizzy with the thought of what it all meant; and at the same instant, Maud seemed to recede from him as something impossibly pure, sweet, and unapproachable. All that notion of a paternal close friendship—how idiotic it was! He wanted her, at every moment, to share every thought with her, to claim every thought of hers, to see her, to clasp her close; and then at the same moment came the terrible disillusionment; how was he, a sober, elderly, stiff-minded professional person, to recommend himself? What was there in him that any girl could find even remotely attractive—his middle-aged habits, his decorous and conventional mind, his clumsy dress, his grizzled hair? He felt of himself that he was 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 record. Mr. Sandys assented to everything, and the number of times that he exclaimed "True, true! admirably said!" exceeded belief. He said to Howard afterwards that the unmixed wine of intellect had proved a potent beverage. "One must drink it down," he said, "and trust to assimilating it later. It has been a glorious week for me, my dear Howard, thanks to you! Quite rejuvenating indeed! I carry away with me a precious treasure of thought—just a few notes of suggestive trains of inquiry have been scribbled down, to be dealt with at leisure. But it is the atmosphere, the rarefied atmosphere of high thought, which has braced and invigorated me. It has entirely obliterated from my mind that odious escapade of Jack's—so judiciously handled! The kindness of these eminent men, these intellectual giants, is profoundly touching and inspiring. I must not indeed hope to trespass on it unduly. Your Master—what a model of self-effacing courtesy—your Vice-Master—what a fine, rugged, uncompromising nature; and the rest of your colleagues"—with a wave of his hand—"what an impression of reserved and restrained force it all gives one! It will often sustain me," said the good Vicar in a burst of confidence, "in my simple labours, to think of all this tide of unaffected intellectual life ebbing and flowing so tranquilly and so systematically in old alma mater! The way in which you have laid yourself out to entertain me is indeed gratifying. If there is a thing I reverence it is intellect, especially when it is framed in modesty and courtesy."

Howard went with him to his lodgings, and just went in to say good-bye to Maud. Jack had been dining with her, but he was gone. He and Guthrie were going to the station to give them a send-off. "A charming young fellow, Guthrie!" said Mr. Sandys. "He has been constantly with us, and it is very pleasant to find that Jack has such an excellent friend. His father is, I believe, a man of wealth and influence? You would hardly have guessed it! That a young man of that sort should have given up so much time to entertaining a country parson and his daughter is really very gratifying—a sign of the growing humanity of the youth of England. I fear we should not have been so tolerant at dear old Pembroke. I like your young men, Howard. They are unduly careless, I think, about dress; but in courtesy and kindness, irreproachable!"

Howard only had a few words with Maud, of a very commonplace kind. She had enjoyed herself very much, and it was good of him to have given up so much time to them. She seemed to him reserved and preoccupied, and he could not do anything to restore the old sense of friendship. He was tired himself; it had been a week of great strain. Far from getting any nearer to Maud, he felt that he had drifted away from her, and that some intangible partition kept them apart. The visit, he felt, had been a mistake from beginning to end.



XVII

SELF-SUPPRESSION

As soon as the term was over, Howard went down to Windlow. He was in a very unhappy frame of mind. He could not capitulate; but the more that he thought, the more that he tried to analyse his feelings, the more complex they became. It really seemed to him at times as if two perfectly distinct people were arguing within him. He was afraid of love; his aim had always been to simplify his life as far as possible, and to live in a serene and cheerful spirit, for the day and in the day. His work, his relations with colleagues and pupils, had all amused and interested him; he had cared for people, he had many friends; but it was all a cool, temperate, unimpassioned kind of caring. People had drifted in and out of his life; with his frank and easy manner, his excellent memory for the characteristics and the circumstances of others, it had been easy for him to pick up a relationship where he had laid it down; but it was all a very untroubled business, and no one had ever really entered into his life; he did not like dropping people, and took some trouble by means of letters to keep up communication with his old pupils; but his friendships had never reached the point at which the loss of a friend would have been a severe blow. He felt that he was always given credit for more affection than he possessed, and this had made him careful not to fail in any duty of friendship. He was always ready to take trouble, to advise, to help his old pupils in their careers; but it had been done more from a sense of courtesy than from any deeper motive.

Now, however, it was very different; he felt himself wholly preoccupied by the thought of Maud; and he found himself looking into the secret of love, as a man might gaze from a hill-top into a chasm where the rocky ridges plunged into mist, doubting of his way, and mistrusting his own strength to pursue the journey. He did not know what the quality of his love was; he recognised an intense kind of passion, but when he looked beyond that, and imagined himself wedded to Maud, what was the emotion that would survive the accomplishment of his desires? Would he find himself longing for the old, comfortable, isolated life again? did he wish his life to be inextricably intertwined with the life of another? He was not sure. He had a dread of having to concede an absolute intimacy, he wished to give only as much as he chose; and then, too, he told himself that he was too old to marry so young a girl, and that she would be happier if she could find a more equal partner for her life. Yet even so the thought of yielding her to another sickened him. He believed that she had been attracted by Guthrie, and that he had but to hold his hand and keep his distance, and the relation might broaden into marriage. He wondered if love could begin so, so easily and simply. He would like to have believed it could not, yet it was just so that love did begin! And then, too, he did not know what was the nature of Maud's feelings to himself. He thought that she had been attracted to him, but in a sisterly sort of way; that he had come across her when she was feeling cramped and dissatisfied, and that a friendship with him had seemed to offer her a chance of expansion and interest.

He often thought of telling the whole story to his aunt; but like many people who seem extraordinarily frank about their feelings and fancies, and speak easily even of their emotions, he found himself condemned to silence about any emotion or experience that had any serious or tragic quality. Most people would have thought him communicative, and even lacking in reticence. But he knew in himself that it was not so; he could speak of his intimate ideas very readily upon slight acquaintance, because they were not to him matters of deep feeling; but the moment that they really moved him, he felt absolutely dumb and tongue-tied.

He established himself at Windlow, and became at once aware that his aunt perceived that there was something amiss. She gave him opportunities of speaking to her, but he could not take them. He shrank with a painful dumbness from displaying his secret wound. It seemed to him undignified and humiliating to confess his weakness. He hoped vaguely that the situation would solve itself, and spare him the necessity of a confession.

He tried to occupy himself in his book, but in vain. Now that he was confronted with a real and urgent dilemma, the origins of religion seemed to him to have no meaning or interest. He did not feel that they had any bearing whatever upon life; and his pain seemed to infect all his perceptions. The quality of beauty in common things, the hill-shapes, the colour of field and wood, the lights of dawn and eve, the sailing cloud, the tints of weathered stone, the old house in its embowered garden, with the pure green lines of the down above, had no charm or significance for him any more. Again and again he said to himself, "How beautiful that would be, if I could but feel it to be so!" He saw, as clearly and critically as ever, the pleasant forms and hues and groupings of things, but it was dull and savourless, while all the attractive ideas that sprang up like flowers in his mind, the happy trains of thought, in which some single fancy ramified and extended itself into unsuspected combinations and connections, these all seemed hardly worth recognising or pursuing. He found himself listless and distracted, just able by an effort to talk, to listen, to exchange thoughts, but utterly without any zest or energy.

Jack had gone off for a short visit, and Howard was thus left mostly alone. He went once or twice to the Vicarage, but found Mr. Sandys an unmixed trial; there seemed something wholly puerile about his absurd energies and activities. The only boon of his society was that he expected no reply to his soliloquies. Maud was there too, a distant graceful figure; but she, too, seemed to have withdrawn into her own thoughts, and their talk was mostly formal. Yet he was painfully and acutely conscious of her presence. She, too, seemed to be clouded and sad. He found himself unable to talk to her unconstrainedly. He could only dumbly watch her; she appeared to avert her eyes from him; and yet he drew from these meetings an infinite series of pictures, which were as if engraved upon his brain. She became for him in these days like a lily drooping in a shadowed place and in a thunderous air; something fading away mutely and sorrowfully, like the old figure of Mariana in the Grange, looking wearily through listless hours for something which had once beckoned to her with a radiant gesture, but which did not return. There were brighter hours, when in the hot July days a little peace fell on him, a little sense of the fragrance and beauty of the world. He took to long and solitary walks on the down in search of bodily fatigue. There was one day in particular which he long remembered, when he had gone up to the camp, and sate in the shade of the thicket on the crisp turf, looking out over the valley, unutterably quiet and peaceful in the hot air. The trees were breathlessly still; the hamlet roofs peeped out above the orchards, the hot air quivered on the down. There were little figures far below moving about the fields. It all looked lost in a sweetness of serene repose; and the thoughts that had troubled him rose with a bitter poignancy, that was almost a physical pain. The contrast between the high summer, the rich life of herb and tree, and his own weary and arid thoughts, fell on him like a flash. Would it not be better to die, to close one's eyes upon it all, to sink into silence, than thus to register the awful conflict of will and passion with the tranquil life that could not surrender its dreams of peace? What did he need and desire? He could not tell; he felt almost a hatred of the slender, quiet girl, with her sweet look, her delicate hands, her noiseless movements. She had made no claim, she did not come in radiant triumph, with impressive gestures and strong commanding influences into his life; she had not even cried out passionately, demanded love, displayed an urgent need; there had been nothing either tragic or imperious, nothing that called for instant solution; she was just a girl, sweet, wayward, anxious-minded, living a trivial, simple, sheltered life. What had given her this awful power over him, which seemed to have rent and shattered all his tranquil contentment, and yet had offered no splendid opportunity, claimed no all-absorbing devotion, no magnificent sacrifice? It was a sort of monstrous spell, a magical enchantment, which had thus made havoc of all his plans and gentle schemes. Life, he felt, could never be the same for him again; he was in the grip of a power that made light of human arrangements. The old books were full of it; they had spoken of some hectic mystery, that seized upon warriors and sages alike, wasted their strength, broke their energies, led them into crime and sorrow. He had always rather despised the pale and hollow-eyed lovers of the old songs, and thought of them as he might think of men indulging in a baneful drug which filched away all manful prowess and vigour. It was like La Belle Dame sans merci after all, the slender faring child, whose kiss in the dim grotto had left the warrior 'alone and palely loitering,' burdened with sad thoughts in the wintry land. And yet he could not withstand it. He could see the reasonable and sensible course, a placid friendship, a long life full of small duties and quiet labours;—and then the thought of Maud would come across him, with her shining hair, her clear eyes, holding a book, as he had seen her last in the Vicarage, in her delicate hands, and looking out into the garden with that troubled inscrutable look; and all the prudent considerations fell and tumbled together like a house of cards, and he felt as though he must go straight to her and fall before her, and ask her to give him a gift the very nature of which he did not know, her girlish self, her lightly-ranging mind, her tiny cares and anxieties, her virginal heart—for what purpose? he did not know; just to be with her, to clasp her close, to hear her voice, to look into her eyes, to discourse with her some hidden secret of love. A faint sense of some infinite beauty and nearness came over him which, if he could win it, would put the whole of life into a different plane. Not a friendly combination, but an absolute openness and nakedness of soul, nothing hidden, nothing kept back, everything confessed and admitted, a passing of two streams of life into one.



XVIII

THE PICNIC

Jack arrived at Windlow in due course, and brought with him Guthrie to stay. Howard thought, and was ashamed of thinking, that Jack had some scheme on foot; and the arrival of Guthrie was embarrassing to him, as likely to complicate an already too complicated situation.

A plan was made for a luncheon picnic on the hill. There was a tower on the highest eminence of the down, some five miles away, a folly built by some wealthy squire among woodlands, and commanding wide views; it was possible to drive to a village at the foot, and to put up vehicles at a country inn; and it was proposed that they should take luncheon up to the tower, and eat it there. The Sandys party were to drive there, and Howard was to drive over with Miss Merry and meet them. Howard did not at all relish the prospect. He had a torturing desire for the presence of Maud, and yet he seemed unable to establish any communication with her; and he felt that the liveliness of the young men would reduce him to a condition of amiable ineffectiveness which would make him, as Marie Bashkirtseff naively said, hardly worth seeing. However, there was no way out, and on a delicious July morning, with soft sunlight everywhere, and great white clouds floating in a sky of turquoise blue, Howard and Miss Merry started from Windlow. The little lady was full of decorous glee, and her mirth, like a working cauldron, threw all her high-minded tastes to the surface. She asked Howard's opinion about quite a number of literary masterpieces, and she ingenuously gave utterance to her meek and joyful views of life, the privileges she enjoyed, and the inspiration which she derived from the ethical views of Robert Browning. Howard found himself wondering why it was all so dreadfully uninteresting and devoid of charm; he asked himself whether, if the little spinster had been personally more attractive, her optimistic chirpings would have seemed to have more significance. Miss Merry had a perfectly definite view of life, and she made life into a distinct success; she was a happy woman, sustained by an abundance of meek enthusiasm. She accepted everything that happened to her, whether good or evil, with the same eager interest. Suffering, according to Miss Merry, had an educative quality, and life was haunted for her by echoes of excellent literature, accurately remembered. But Howard had a feeling that one must not swallow life quite so uncritically, that there ought somehow to be more discrimination; and Miss Merry's eager adoration of everything and everybody reduced him to a flatness which he found it difficult to conceal. He could not think what was the matter with her views. She revelled in what she called problems, and the more incomplete that anything appeared, the more certain was Miss Merry of ultimate perfection. There did not seem any room for humanity, with its varying moods, in her outlook; and yet Howard had the grace to be ashamed of his own sullen dreariness, which certainly did not appear to lend any dignity to life. But he had not the heart to spoil the little lady's pleasure, and engaged in small talk upon moderately abstract topics with courteous industry. "Of course," said his companion confidingly, "all that I do is on a very small scale, but I think that the quality of it is what matters—the quality of one's ideal, I mean." Howard murmuringly assented. "I have sometimes even wished," she went on, "that I had some real trouble of my own—that seems foolish to you, no doubt, because my life is such an easy one—but I do feel that my happiness rather cuts me off from other people—and I don't want to be cut off from other people; I desire to know how and why they suffer."

"Ah," said Howard, "while you feel that, it is all right; but the worst of real suffering is, I believe, that it is apt to be entirely dreary—it is not at all romantic, as it seems from the outside; indeed it is the loss of all that sense of excitement which makes suffering what it is. But really I have no right to speak either, for I have had a very happy life too."

Miss Merry heard him moist-eyed and intent. "Yes, I am sure that is true!" she said. "I suppose we all have just as much as we can use—just as much as it is good for us to have."

They found that the others had arrived, and were unpacking the luncheon. Maud greeted Howard with a shy expectancy; but the sight of her, slender and fresh in her rough walking-dress, renewed his strange pangs. What did he want of her, he asked himself; what was this mysterious and unmanning sense, that made him conscious of every movement and every word of the girl? Why could he not meet her in a cheerful, friendly, simple way, and make the most of her enchanting company?

Mr. Sandys was in great spirits, revelling in arrangements and directions. But the wind was taken out of his sails by the two young men, who were engaged in enacting a bewildering kind of drama, a saga, of which the venerable Mr. Redmayne appeared to be the hero. Guthrie, who was in almost overpowering spirits, took the part of Mr. Redmayne, whom he imitated with amazing fidelity. He had become, it seemed, a man of low and degrading tastes—'Erb Redmayne, he was called, or old 'Erb, whose role was to lead the other authorities of the college into all kinds of disreputable haunts, to prompt them to absurd misdeeds, to take advantage of their ingenuousness, to make scapegoats of them, and to adroitly evade justice himself.

On this occasion 'Erb Redmayne seemed to have inveigled the Master, whose part was taken by Jack, to a race-meeting, to be introducing him to the Most unsatisfactory company, to force him to put money on certain horses, to evade the payment of debts incurred, to be detected in the act of absconding, and to leave the unfortunate Master to bear the brunt of public indignation. Guthrie seemed at first a little shy of enacting this drama before Howard, but Jack said reassuringly, "Oh, he won't give us away—it will amuse him!" This extravaganza continued with immense gusto and emphasis all the way to luncheon, 'Erb Redmayne treating the Master with undisguised contempt, and the Master performing meekly his bidding. Mr. Sandys was in fits of laughter. "Excellent, excellent!" he cried among his paroxysms. "You irreverent young rascals—but it was just the sort of thing we used to do, I am afraid!"

There was no doubt that it was amusing; in another mood Howard would have been enchanted by the performance, and even flattered at being allowed to overhear it. Mr. Redmayne was admirably rendered, and Jack's performance of the anxious and courteous Master, treading the primrose path reluctantly and yet subserviently, was very nearly as good. But Howard simply could not be amused, and it made it almost worse for him to see that Maud was delighted, while even Miss Merry was obviously though timidly enjoying the enlargement of her experience, and exulting in her freedom from any priggish disapproval.

They made their way to the top and found the tower, a shell of masonry, which could be ascended by a winding staircase in a turret. The view, from the platform at the summit, was certainly enchanting. The tower stood in an open heathery space, with woods enclosing it on every side; from the parapet they looked down over the steeply falling tree-tops to an immense plain, where a river widened to the sea. Howard, side by side with Maud, gazed in silence. Mr. Sandys identified landmarks with a map. "How nice it is to see a bit of the world!" said Maud, "and how happy and contented it all looks. It seems odd to think of men and women down there, creeping about their work, going to and fro as usual, and not aware that they are being looked down upon like this. It all seems a very simple business."

"Yes," said Howard, "that is the strange thing. It does seem so simple and tranquil! and yet one knows that down there people have their troubles and anxieties—people are ill, are dying—are wondering what it all means, why they are set just there, and why they have so short a time to stay!"

"I suppose it all fits into itself," said Maud, "somehow or other. I don't think that life really contradicts itself!"

"I don't know," said Howard, with a sudden access of dreariness; "that is exactly what it DOES seem to do—that's the misery of it!"

The girl looked at him but did not speak; he gave her an uneasy smile, and she presently turned away and looked over her father's map.

They went down and lunched on a green bank among the fern, under some old oaks. The sunlight fell among the glades; a flock of tits, chirruping and hunting, rushed past them and plunged downward into the wood. They could hear a dove in the high trees near them, crooning a song of peace and infinite content. Mr. Sandys, stung by emulation, related a long story, interspersed with imitations, of his undergraduate days; and Howard was content to sit and seem to listen, and to watch the light pierce downwards into the silent woodland. An old woodman, grey and bent and walking painfully, in great leather gloves and gaiters, carrying a chopper, passed slowly along the ride and touched his hat. Jack insisted on giving him some of the luncheon, and made up a package for him which the old man put away in a pocket, making some remarks about the weather, and adding with a senile pride that he was over seventy, and had worked in the woodland for sixty years and more. He was an almost mediaeval figure, Howard thought—a woodman five centuries ago would have looked and spoken much the same; he knew nothing of the world, or the thoughts and hopes of it; he was almost as much of the soil as the very woods themselves, in his dim mechanical life; was man made for that after all? How did that square with Miss Merry's eager optimism? What was the meaning of so unconscious a figure, so obviously without an ethical programme, and yet so curiously devised by God, patiently nurtured and preserved?

In the infinite peace, while the flies hummed on the shining bracken, and the breeze nestled in the firs like a falling sea, Howard had a spasm of incredulous misery. Could any heart be so heavy, so unquiet as his own?—life suddenly struck so aimless, with but one overmastering desire, which he could not fulfil. He was shocked at his feebleness. A year ago he could have devised no sweeter or more delicious day than this, with such a party, in the high sunlit wood. . . .

The imitations began again.

"I don't believe there's anyone you could not imitate!" said Mr. Sandys rapturously.

"Oh, it's only a knack," said Guthrie, "but some people are easier than others."

Howard bestirred himself to express some interest.

"Why, he can imitate YOU to the life," said Jack.

"Oh, come, nonsense!" said Guthrie, reddening; "that is really low, Jack."

"I confess to a great curiosity about it," said Mr. Sandys.

"Oh, don't mind me," said Howard; "it would amuse me above everything—like catching a glance at oneself in an unexpected mirror!"

Guthrie, after a little more pressing, yielded. He said a few sentences, supposed to be Howard teaching, in a rather soft voice, with what seemed to Howard a horribly affected and priggish emphasis. But the matter displeased him still more. It was facetious, almost jocose; and there was a jerky attempt at academic humour in it, which seemed to him particularly nauseous, as of a well-informed and quite superior person condescending to the mildest of witticisms, to put himself on a level with juvenile minds. Howard had thought himself both unaffected and elastic in his communications with undergraduates, and this was the effect he produced upon them! However, he mastered his irritation; the others laughed a little tentatively; it was felt for a moment that the affair had just passed the limits of conventional civility. Howard contrived to utter a species of laugh, and said, "Well, that's quite a revelation to me. It never occurred to me that there could be anything to imitate in my utterance; but then it is always impossible to believe that anyone can find anything to discuss in one behind one's back—though I suppose no one can escape. I must get a stock of new witticisms, I think; the typical ones seem a little threadbare."

"Oh no, indeed," said Miss Merry, gallantly; "I was just thinking how much I should like to be taught like that!"

The little incident seemed rather to damp the spirits of the party. Guthrie himself seemed deeply annoyed at having consented: and it was a relief to all when Mr. Sandys suddenly pulled out his watch and said, "Well, all pleasant things come to an end—though to be sure there is generally another pleasant thing waiting round the corner. I have to get back, but I am not going to spoil the party. I shall enjoy a bit of a walk."

"Well," said Howard, "I think I will set you on your way. I want a talk about one or two things; but I will come back to chaperon Miss Merry—I suppose I shall find you somewhere about?"

"Yes," said Miss Merry, "I am going to try a sketch—but I must not have anyone looking over my shoulder. I am no good at sketching—but I like to be made to look close at a pretty thing. I am going to try the chalk-pit and thicket near the tower—chalk-pits suit my style, because one can leave so much of the paper white!"

"Very well," said Howard, "I will be back here in an hour."

Howard and Mr. Sandys started off through the wood. Mr. Sandys was full of communications. He began to talk about Guthrie. "Such a good friend for Jack!" he said; "I hope he bears a good character in the college? Jack seems to be very much taken up with him, and says there is no nonsense about him—almost the highest commendation he has in his power to bestow—indeed I have heard him use the same phrase about yourself! Young Guthrie seems such a natural and unaffected fellow—indeed, if I may say so, Howard, it seemed to me a high compliment to yourself, and to speak volumes for your easy relation with young men, that he should have ventured to take you off to your face just now, and that you should have been so sincerely amused. It isn't as if he were a cheeky sort of boy—if I may be allowed such an expression. He treats me with the pleasantest deference and respect—and when I think of his father's wealth and political influence, that seems to me a charming trait! There is nothing uppish about him."

"No, indeed," said Howard; "he is a thoroughly nice fellow!"

"I am delighted to hear you say so," said Mr. Sandys, "and your kindness emboldens me to say something which is quite confidential; but then we are practically relations, are we not? Perhaps it is only a father's partiality; but have you noticed, may I say, anything in his manner to my dear Maud? It may be only a passing fancy, of course. 'In the spring,' you remember, 'a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love'—a beautiful line that, though of course it is not strictly applicable to the end of July. I need hardly say that such a connection would gladden my heart. I am all for marriage, Howard, for early marriage, the simplest and best of human experiences; of course it has more sides than one to it. I should not like it to be supposed that a country parson like myself had in the smallest degree inveigled a young man of the highest prospects into a match—there is nothing of the matchmaker about me; but Maud is in a degree well-connected; and, as you know, she will be what the country people here call 'well-left'—a terse phrase, but expressive! I do not see that she would be in any way unworthy of the position—and I feel that her life here is a little secluded—I should like her to have a little richer material, so to speak, to work in. Well, well, we mustn't be too diplomatic about these things. 'Man proposes'—no humorous suggestion intended—'and God disposes'—but if it should so turn out, without any scheming or management—things which I cordially detest—if it should open out naturally, why, I should be lacking in candour if I pretended it would not please me. I believe in early engagements, and romance, and all that—I fear I am terribly sentimental—and it is just the thing to keep a young man straight. Sir Henry Guthrie might be disposed to view it in that light—what do you think?"

This ingenuous statement had a very distressing effect on Howard. It is one thing to dally with a thought, however seriously, in one's own mind, and something quite different to have it presented in black and white through the frank conjecture of another. He put a severe constraint upon himself and said, "Do you know, Frank, the same thought had occurred to me—I had believed that I saw something of the kind; and I can honestly say that I think Guthrie a very sound fellow indeed in every way—quite apart from his worldly prospects. He is straight, sensible, good-humoured, capable, and, I think, a really unselfish fellow. If I had a daughter of my own I could not imagine a better husband."

"You delight me inexpressibly," said Mr. Sandys. "So you had noticed it? Well, well, I trust your perception far more than my own; and of course I am biassed—you might almost incline to say dazzled—by the prospect: heir to a baronetcy (I could wish it had been of an earlier creation), rich, and, as you say, entirely reliable and straight. Of course I don't in any way wish to force matters on. I could not bear to be thought to have unduly encouraged such an alliance—and Maud may marry any nice fellow she has a fancy to marry; but I think that she is rather drawn to young Guthrie—what do you think? He amuses her, and she is at her best with him—don't you think so?"

"Yes," said Howard, "I had thought so. I think she likes him very much."

"Well, we will leave it at that," said Mr. Sandys in high gusto. "You don't mind my confiding in you thus, Howard? Somehow, if I may say it, I find it very easy to speak confidentially to you. You are so perceptive, so sympathetic! We all feel that it is the secret of your great influence."

They talked of other matters after this as they walked along the crest of the downs; and where the white road began to descend into the valley, with the roofs of Windlow glimmering in the trees a little to the north, Howard left the Vicar and retraced his steps.

He was acutely miserable; the thing had come upon him with a shock, and brought the truth home to him in a desperate way. But he experienced at the same time a certain sensation, for a moment, of grim relief. His fancy, his hope—how absurd and idiotic they had been!—were shattered. How could he ever have dreamed that the girl should come to care for him in that way—an elderly Don of settled habits, who had even mistaken a pompous condescension to the young men of his College for a natural and sympathetic relation—that was what he was. The melancholy truth stared him in the face. He was sharply disillusioned. He had lingered on, clinging pathetically to youth, and with a serene complacency he had overlooked the flight of time. He was a dull, middle-aged man, fond of sentimental relations and trivial confidences, who had done nothing, effected nothing; had even egregiously failed in the one thing he had set himself to do, the retaining his hold on youth. Well, he must face it! He must be content to settle down as a small squire; he must disentangle himself from his Cambridge work gradually—it sickened him to think of it—and he must try to lead a quiet life, and perhaps put together a stupid book or two. That was to be his programme. He must just try to be grateful for a clear line of action. If he had had nothing but Cambridge to depend upon, it would have been still worse. Now he must settle down to county business if he could, and clear his mind of all foolish regrets. Love and marriage—he was ten years too late! He had dawdled on, taking the line of least resistance, and he was now revealed to himself in a true and unsparing light. He paced swiftly on, and presently entered the wood. His feet fell soft on the grassy road among the coverts.

Suddenly, as he turned a corner, he saw a little open glade to the right. A short way up the glade stood two figures—Guthrie and Maud—engaged in conversation. They were standing facing each other. She seemed to be expostulating with him in a laughing way; he stood bareheaded, holding his hat in his hand, eagerly defending himself. The pose of the two seemed to show an easy sort of comradeship. Maud was holding a stick in both hands behind her, and half resting upon it. They seemed entirely absorbed in what they were saying. Howard could not bear to intrude upon the scene. He fell back among the trees, retraced his steps, and then sat down on a grassy bank, a little off the path, and waited. It was the last confirmation of his fears. It was not quite a lover-like scene, but they evidently understood each other, and were wholly at their ease together, while Guthrie's admiring and passionate look did not escape him. He rested his head in his hands, and bore the truth as he might have borne a physical pain. The summer woods, the green thickets, the sunlight on the turf, the white clouds, the rich plain just visible through the falling tree-trunks, all seemed to him like a vision seen by a spirit in torment, something horribly unreal and torturing. The two streams of beauty and misery appeared to run side by side, so distinct, so unblending; but the horrible fact was that though sorrow was able not only to assert its own fiery power, like the sting of some malignant insect, it could also obliterate and efface joy; it could even press joy into its service, to accentuate its torment; while the joy and beauty of life seemed wholly unable to soothe or help him, but were brushed aside, just as a stern soldier, armed and mailed, could brush aside the onslaught of some delicate and frenzied boy. Was pain the stronger power, was it the ultimate power? In that dark moment, Howard felt that it was. Joy seemed to him like a little pool of crystalline water, charming enough if tended and sheltered, but a thing that could be soiled and scattered in a moment by the onrush of some foul and violent beast.

He came at last to the rendezvous. Miss Merry sat at her post transferring to a little block of paper a smeared and streaky picture of the chalk-pit, which seemed equally unintelligible at whatever angle it might be held. Jack was couched at a little distance in the heather, smoking a pipe. Howard went and sat down moodily beside him. "An odd thing, a picnic," said Jack musingly; "I am not sure it is not an invention of the devil. Is anything the matter, Howard? You look as if things had gone wrong. You don't mind that nonsense of Guthrie's, do you? I was an ass to get him to do it; I hate doing a stupid thing, and he is simply wild with me. It's no good saying it is not like, because it is in a way, but of course it's only a rag. It isn't absurd when you do it, only when someone else does."

"Oh no, I don't mind about that," said Howard; "do make that plain to Guthrie. I am out of sorts, I think; one gets bothered, you know—what is called the blues."

"Oh, I know," said Jack sympathetically; "I don't suffer from them myself as a rule, but I have got a touch of them to-day. I can't understand what everyone is up to. Fred Guthrie has got the jumps. It looks to me," he went on sagely, "as if he was what is commonly called in love: but when the other person is one's sister, it seems strange. Maud isn't a bad girl, as they go, but she isn't an angel, and still less a saint; but Fred has no eyes for anyone else; I can't screw a sensible word out of him. These young people!" said Jack with a sour grimace; "you and I know better. One ought to leave the women alone; there's something queer about them; you never know where you are with them."

Howard regarded him in silence for a moment: it did not seem worth while to argue; nothing seemed worth while. "Where are they?" he said drearily.

"Oh, goodness knows!" said Jack; "when I last saw them he was beating down the ferns with a stick for Maud to go through. He's absolutely demented, and she is at one of her games. I think I shall sheer off, and go to visit some sick people, like the governor; that's about all I feel up to."

At this moment, however, the truants appeared, walking silently out of a glade. Howard had an obscure feeling that something serious had happened—he did not know what. Guthrie looked dejected, and Maud was evidently preoccupied. "Oh, damn the whole show!" said Jack, getting up. "Let's get out of this!"

"We lost our way," said Maud, rather hurriedly, "and couldn't find our way back."

Maud went up to Miss Merry, asked to see her sketch, and indulged in some very intemperate praise. Guthrie came up to Howard, and stammered through an apology for his rudeness.

"Oh, don't say anything more," said Howard. "Of course I didn't mind! It really doesn't matter at all."

The day was beginning to decline; and in an awkward silence, only broken by inconsequent remarks, the party descended the hill, regained the carriages, and drove off in mournful silence. As the Vicarage party drove away, Jack glanced at Howard, raised his eyes in mock despair, and gave a solemn shake of his head.

Howard followed with Miss Merry, and talked wildly about the future of English poetry, till they drove in under the archway of the Manor and his penance was at an end.



XIX

DESPONDENCY

Howard spent some very unhappy days after that, mostly alone. They were very active at the Vicarage making expeditions, fishing, playing lawn-tennis, and once or twice pressed him to join them. But he excused himself on the ground that he must work at his book; he could not bear to carry his despondency and his dolorous air into so blithe a company; and he was, moreover, consumed by a jealousy which humiliated him. If Guthrie was destined to win Maud's love he should have a fair field; and yet Howard's imagination played him many fevered tricks in those days, and the thought of what might be happening used to sting him into desperation. His own mood alternated between misery and languor. He used to sit staring at his book, unable to write a word, and became gradually aware that he had never been unhappy in his life before. That, then, was what unhappiness meant, not a mood of refined and romantic melancholy, but a raging fire of depression that seemed to burn his life away, both physically and mentally, with intervals of drowsy listlessness.

He would have liked to talk to his aunt, but could not bring himself to do so. She, on the other hand, seemed to notice nothing, and it was a great relief to him that she never commented upon his melancholy and obvious fatigue, but went on in her accustomed serene way, which evoked his courtesy and sense of decorum, and made him behave decently in spite of himself. Miss Merry seemed much more inclined to sympathise, and Howard used to intercept her gaze bent upon him in deep concern.

One afternoon, returning from a lonely walk, he met Maud going out of the Manor gate. She looked happy, he thought. He stopped and made a few commonplace remarks. She looked at him rather strangely, he felt, and seemed to be searching his face for some sign of the old goodwill; but he hardened his heart, though he would have given worlds to tell her what was in his mind; but he felt that any reconstruction of friendship must be left till a later date, when he might again be able to conciliate her sisterly regard. She seemed to him to have passed through an awakening of some kind, and to have bloomed both in mind and body, with her feet on the threshold of vital experience, and the thought that it was Guthrie who could evoke this upspringing of life within her was very bitter to him.

He trod the valley of humiliation hour by hour, in these lonely days, and found it a very dreary place. It was wretched to him to feel that he had suddenly discovered his limitations. Not only could he not have his will, could not taste the fruit of love which had seemed to hang almost within his reach, but the old contented life seemed to have faded and collapsed about him.

That night his aunt asked him about his book, and he said he was not getting on well with it. She asked why, and he said that he had been feeling that it was altogether too intellectual a conception; that he had approached it from the side of REASON, as if people argued themselves into faith, and had treated religion as a thesis which could be successfully defended; whereas the vital part of it all, he now thought, was an instinct, perhaps refined by inherited thought, but in its practical manifestations a kind of choice, determined by a natural liking for what was attractive, and a dislike of what was morally ugly.

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "that is true, I am sure. But it can be analysed for all that, though I agree with you that no amount of analysis will make one act rightly. But I believe," she went on, "that clearness of view helps one, though not perhaps at the time. It is a great thing to see what motives are merely conventional and convenient, and to find out what one really regards as principles. To look a conventional motive in the face deprives it of its power; and one can gradually disencumber oneself of all sorts of complicated impulses, which have their roots in no emotion. It is only the motives which are rooted in emotion that are vital."

Then, after a pause, she said, "Of course I have seen of late that you have been dissatisfied with something. I have not liked to ask you about it; but if it would help you to talk about it, I hope you will. It is wonderful how talking about things makes one's mind clear. It isn't anything that others say or advise that helps one, yet one gains in clearness. But you must do as you like about this, Howard. I don't want to press you in any way."

"Thank you very much," said Howard. "I know that you would hear me with patience, and might perhaps advise me if anyone could; but it isn't that. I have got myself into a strange difficulty; and what I need is not clearness, but simply courage to face what I know and perceive. My great lack hitherto is that I have gone through things without feeling them, like a swallow dipping in a lake; now I have got to sink and drown. No," he added, smiling, "not to drown, I hope, but to find a new life in the ruins of the old. I have been on the wrong tack; I have always had what I liked, and done what I liked; and now when I am confronted with things which I do not like at all, I have just got to endure them, and be glad that I have still got the power of suffering left."

Mrs. Graves looked at him very tenderly. "Yes," she said, "suffering has a great power, and one doesn't want those whom one loves not to suffer. It is the condition of loving; but it must be real suffering, not morbid, self-invented torture. It's a great mistake to suffer more than one need; one wastes life fast so. I would not intervene to save you from real suffering, even if I could; but I don't want you to suffer in an unreal way. I think you are diffident, too easily discouraged, too courteous, if that is possible—because diffidence, and discouragement, and even courtesy, are not always unselfish things. If one renounces anything one has set one's heart upon one must do so for its own sake, and not only because the disapproval and disappointment of others makes life uncomfortable. I think that your life has tended to make you value an atmosphere of diffused tranquillity too much. If one is sensitive to the censure or the displeasure of others, it may not be unselfish to give up things rather than provoke it—it may only be another form of selfishness. Some of the most unworldly people I know have not overcome the world at all; they have merely made terms with it, and have found that abnegation is only more comfortable than conquest. I do not know that you are doing this, or have done it, but I think it likely. And in any case I think you trust reason too much, and instinct too little. If one desires a thing very much, it is often a proof that one needs it. One may not indeed be able to get it, but to resign it is sometimes to fail in courage. I can see that you are in some way discontented with your life. Don't try to mend it by a polite withdrawal. I am going to pay you a compliment. You have a wonderful charm, of which you are unconscious. It has made life very easy for you—but it has responsibilities too. You must not create a situation, and then abandon it. You must not disappoint people. I know, of course, only too well, that charm in itself largely depends on a tranquil mind; and it is difficult to exercise it when one is sad and unhappy; but let me say that unhappiness does not deprive YOU of this power. Does it seem impossible to you to believe that I have loved you far better, and in a way which I could not have thought possible, in these last weeks, when I have seen you were unhappy? You do not abandon yourself to depression; you make an effort; you recognise other people's rights to be happy, not to be clouded by your own unhappiness; and you have done more to attach us all to you in these days than before, when you were perhaps more conscious of being liked. Liking is not loving, Howard. There is no pain about liking; there is infinite pain about loving; that is because it is life, and not mere existence."

"Ah," said Howard, "I am indeed grateful to you for speaking to me thus—you have lifted my spirit a little out of the mire. But I can't be rescued so easily. I shall have a burden to bear for some time yet—I see no end to it at present: and it is indeed my own foolish trifling with life that has brought it on me. But, dearest aunt, you can't help me just now. Let me be silent a little longer. I shall soon, I think, be able to speak, and then I will tell you all; and meanwhile it will be a comfort to me to think that you feel for me and about me as you do. I don't want to indulge in self-pity—I have not done that. There is nothing unjust in what has happened to me, nothing intolerable, no specific ill-will. I have just stumbled upon one of the big troubles of life, suddenly and unexpectedly, and I am not prepared for it by any practice or discipline. But I shall get through, don't be afraid—and presently I will tell you everything." He took his aunt's hand in his own, and kissed her on the cheek.

"God bless you, dear boy!" she said; "I won't press you to speak; and you will know that I have you in mind now and always, with infinite hope and love."



XX

HIGHMINDEDNESS

Howard on thinking over this conversation was somewhat bewildered as to what exactly was in his aunt's mind. He did not think that she understood his feeling for Maud, and he was sure that she did not realise what Maud's feelings about Freddy Guthrie were. He came to the conclusion eventually that Maud had told her about the beginnings of their friendship; that his aunt supposed that he had tried to win Maud's confidence, as he would have made friends with one of his young men; and that she imagined that he had found that Maud's feeling for him had developed in rather too confidential a line, as for a father-confessor. He thought that Mrs. Graves had seen that Maud had been disposed to adopt him as a kind of ethical director, and had thought that he had been bored at finding a girl's friendship so much more exacting than the friendship of a young man; and that she had been exhorting him to be more brotherly and simple in his relations with Maud, and to help her to the best of his ability. He imagined that Maud had told Mrs. Graves that he had been advising her, and that she had perhaps since told her of his chilly reception of her later confidences. That was the situation he had created; and he felt with what utter clumsiness he had handled it. His aunt, no doubt, thought that he had been disturbed at finding how much more emotional a girl's dependence upon an older man was than he had expected. But he felt that when he could tell her the whole story, she would see that he could not have acted otherwise. He had been so thrown off his balance by finding how deeply he cared for Maud, that he had been simply unable to respond to her advances. He ought to have had more control of himself. Mrs. Graves had not suspected that he could have grown to care for a girl, almost young enough to be his daughter, in so passionate a way. He wished he could have explained the whole to her, but he was too deeply wounded in mind to confess to his aunt how impulsive he had been. He had now no doubt that there was an understanding between Maud and Guthrie. Everyone else seemed to think so; and when once the affair was happily launched, he would enjoy a mournful triumph, he thought, by explaining to Mrs. Graves how considerately he had behaved, and how painful a dilemma Maud would have been placed in if he had declared his passion. Maud would have blamed herself; she might easily, with her anxious sense of responsibility, have persuaded herself into accepting him as a lover; and then a life-long penance might have begun for her. He had, at what a cost, saved Maud from the chance of such a mistake. It was a sad tangle; but when Maud was happily married, he would perhaps be able to explain to her why he had behaved as he had done; and she would be grateful to him then. His restless and fevered imagination traced emotional and dramatic scenes, in which his delicacy would at last be revealed. He felt ashamed of himself for this abandonment to sentiment, but he seemed to have lost control over the emotional part of his mind, which continued to luxuriate in the consciousness of his own self-effacement. He had indeed, he felt, fallen low. But he continued to trace in his mind how each of the actors in the little drama—Mr. Sandys, Jack, Guthrie himself, Maud, Mrs. Graves—would each have reason to thank him for having held himself aloof, and for sacrificing his own desires. There was comfort in that thought; and for the first time in these miserable weeks he felt a little glow of self-approval at the consciousness of his own prudence and justice. The best thing, he now reflected, would be to remove himself from the scene altogether for a time, and to return in radiant benevolence, when the affair had settled itself: but Maud—and then there came over him the thought of the girl, her sweetness, her eager delight, her adorable frankness, her innocence, her desire to be in affectionate relations with all who came within reach of her; and the sense of his own foresight and benevolence was instantly and entirely overwhelmed at the thought of what he had missed, and of what he might have aspired to, if it had not been for just the wretched obstacle of age and circumstance. A few years younger—if he had been that, he could have followed the leading of his heart, and—he dared think no more of what might have been possible.

But what brought matters to a head was a scene that he saw on the following day. He was in the library in the morning; he tried to work, but he could not command his attention. At last he rose and went to the little oriel, which commanded a view of the village green. Just as he did so, he caught sight of two figures—Maud and Guthrie—walking together on the road which led from the Vicarage. They were talking in the plainest intimacy. Guthrie seemed to be arguing some point with laughing insistence, and Maud to be listening in amused delight. Presently they came to a stop, and he could see Maud hold up a finger. Guthrie at once desisted. At this moment a kitten scampered across the green to them sideways, its tail up. Guthrie caught it up, and as he held it in his arms. Howard saw Maud bend over it and caress it. The scene brought an instant conviction to his mind; but presently Maud said a word to her companion, and then came across the green to the Manor, passing in at the gate just underneath him. Howard stood back that he might not be observed. He saw Maud come in under the gateway, half smiling to herself as at something that had happened. As she did so, she waved her hand to Guthrie, who stood holding the kitten in his arms and looking after her. When she disappeared, he put the kitten down, and then walked back towards the Vicarage.



XXI

THE AWAKENING

Howard spent the rest of the morning in very bitter cogitation; after luncheon, during which he could hardly force himself to speak, he excused himself on the plea of wanting exercise.

It was in a real agony of mind and spirit that he left the house. He was certain now; and he was not only haunted by his loss, but he was horrified at his entire lack of self-control and restraint. His thoughts came in, like great waves striking on a rocky reef, and rending themselves in sheets of scattered foam. He seemed to himself to have been slowly inveigled into his fate by a worse than malicious power; something had planned his doom. He remembered his old tranquillities; his little touch of boredom; and then how easy the descent had been! He had been drawn by a slender thread of circumstance into paying his visit to Windlow; his friendship with Jack had just toppled over the balance; he had gone; then there had come his talk with his aunt, which had wrought him up into a mood of vague excitement. Just at that moment Maud had come in his way; then friendship had followed; and then he had been seized with this devouring passion which had devastated his heart. He had known all the time that he was too late; and even so he had gone to work the wrong way: it was his infernal diplomacy, his trick of playing with other lives, of yielding to emotional intimacies—that fatal desire to have a definite relation, to mean something to everyone in his circle. Then this wretched, attractive, pleasant youth, with his superficial charm, had intervened. If he had been wise he would never have suggested that visit to Cambridge. Maud had hitherto been just like Miranda on the island; she had never been brought into close contact with a young cavalier; and the subtle instinct of youth had done the rest, the instinct for the equal mate, so far stronger and more subtle than any reasonable or intellectual friendship. And then he, devoured as he had been by his love, had been unable to use his faculties; he could do nothing but glare and wink, while his treasure was stolen from him; he had made mistakes at every turn. What would he not give now to be restored to his old, balanced, easy life, with its little friendships and duties. How fantastic and unreal his aunt's theories seemed to him, reveries contrived just to gild the gaps of a broken life, a dramatisation of emptiness and self-importance. At every moment the face and figure of Maud came before him in a hundred sweet, spontaneous movements—the look of her eyes, the slow thrill of her voice. He needed her with all his soul—every fibre of his being cried out for her. And then the thought of being thus pitifully overcome, humiliated and degraded him. If she had not been beautiful, he would perhaps never have thought of her except with a mild and courteous interest. This was the draught of life which he had put so curiously to his lips, sweet and heady to taste, but with what infinite bitterness and disgust in the cup. It had robbed him of everything—of his work, of his temperate ecstasies in sight and sound, of his intellectual enthusiasm. His life was all broken to pieces about him; he had lost at once all interest and all sense of dignity. He was simply a man betrayed by a passion, which had fevered him just because his life had been so orderly and pure. He was not strong enough even to cut himself adrift from it all. He must just welter on, a figure visibly touched by depression and ill-fortune, and hammering out the old grammar-grind. Had any writer, any poet, ever agonised thus? The people who discoursed glibly about love, and wove their sorrows into elegies, what sort of prurient curs were they? It was all too bad to think of, to speak of—a mere staggering among the mudflats of life.