MORAL SUPPORT
May Dashwood's features were not faultless. For instance, her determined
little nose was rather short and just a trifle retrousse and her
eyebrows sometimes looked a little surprised. Her great charm lay not in
her clear complexion and her bright brown hair, admirable as they were,
but in her full expressive grey eyes, and when she smiled, it was not
the toothy smile of professional gaiety, but a subtle, archly animated
and sympathetic smile; so that both men and women who were once smiled
at by her, immediately felt the necessity of being smiled at again!
May was still dressed in mourning, very plainly, and she wore no furs.
She came into the room and looked round her.
"May!" exclaimed Lady Dashwood.
"I thought you were ill, Aunt Lena!" said May amazed at the sight of
Lady Dashwood, dressed for dinner and apparently in robust health.
"I _am_ ill," exclaimed Lady Dashwood, and she tapped her forehead. "I'm
ill here," and she advanced to meet her niece with open arms.
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Dashwood, hastening up to her aunt.
"I'm still partially sane, May--but--if you hadn't come!" said Lady
Dashwood, kissing her niece on both cheeks. She did not finish her
sentence.
Mrs. Dashwood put both hands on her aunt's shoulders and examined her
face carefully.
"Yes, I see you're quite sane, Aunt Lena."
"Will you minister to a mind--not actually diseased but oppressed by a
consuming worry?" asked Lady Dashwood earnestly. "Don't think I'm a
humbug--I need you much more, just now, than if I'd been merely
ill--with a bilious attack, say. You've saved my life! I wish I could
explain--but it is difficult to explain--sometimes."
"I'm glad I've saved your life," said May, and she smiled her peculiar
smile.
"I see victory--the battle won--already," said Lady Dashwood, looking at
her intently. "I wish I could explain----"
"Let it ooze out, Aunt Lena. I can stay for three days--if you want--if
I can really do anything for you----"
"Can't you stay a week?" asked Lady Dashwood. "May, I'm not joking. I
want your presence badly--can't you spare the time? Relieve my mind,
dear, at once, by telling me you can!"
Lady Dashwood's face suddenly became puckered and her voice was so
urgent that May's smile died away.
"If it is really important I'll stay a week. Nothing wrong about
you--or--Uncle John?" May looked into her aunt's eyes.
"No!" said Lady Dashwood. "John doesn't like my being away. An old
soldier has much to make him sad now, but no----" Then she added in an
undertone, "Jim ..." and she stared into her niece's face.
Under the portrait of that bold, handsome, unscrupulous Warden of King's
a faithful clock ticked to the passing of time. The time it showed now
was twenty minutes to eight. Both ladies in silence had turned to the
fire and they were now both standing each with one foot on the fender
and were looking up at the portrait and not at the clock. Neither of
them, however, thought of the portrait. They merely looked at it--as
one must look at something.
"Jim," sighed Lady Dashwood. "You don't know him, May."
"Is it he who is ill?" asked May.
"He's not ill. He is terribly depressed at times because so many of his
old pupils are gone--for ever. But it's not that, not that that I mean.
You know what learned men are, May?" Lady Dashwood did not ask a
question, she was making an assertion.
May Dashwood still gazed at the portrait but now she lowered her
eyelids, looking critically through the narrowed space with her grey
eyes.
"No, I don't know what learned men are," she replied very slowly. "I
have met so few."
"Jim has taken----" and again Lady Dashwood hesitated.
"Not to Eau Perrier?" almost whispered Mrs. Dashwood.
"Certainly not," exclaimed Lady Dashwood. "I don't think he has touched
alcohol since the War. It's nothing so elementary as that. I feel as if
I were treacherous in talking about it--and yet I must talk about
it--because you have to help me. A really learned man is so----"
"Do you mean that he knows all about Julius Caesar," said May, "and
nothing about himself?"
"I shouldn't mind that so much," said the elder lady, grasping eagerly
at this introduction to an analysis of the learned man. "I had better
blurt it all out, May. Well--he knows nothing about women----" Lady
Dashwood spoke with angry emphasis, but in a whisper.
"Ah!" said Mrs. Dashwood, and now she stared deeply at one particular
block of wood that was spitting quietly at the attacking flames. She
raised her arm and laid her hand on her aunt Lena's shoulder. Then she
squeezed the shoulder slightly as if to gently squeeze out a little more
information.
"Jim is--I'm not sure--but I'm suspicious--on the verge of getting into
a mess," said her aunt still in a low voice.
"Ah!" said May again. "With some woman?"
"All perfectly proper," said Lady Dashwood, "but--oh, May--it's so
unspeakably dreary and desolating."
"Much older than he is?" asked May softly, with an emphasis on "much."
"Very much younger," said Lady Dashwood. "Only eighteen!"
"Not nice then?" asked May again softly.
"Not anything--except pretty--and"--here Lady Dashwood had a strident
bitterness in her voice--"and--she has a mother."
"Ah!" said May.
"You know Lady Belinda Scott?" asked Lady Dashwood.
May Dashwood moved her head in assent. "Not having enough money for
everything one wants is the root of all evil?" she said imitating
somebody.
"Belinda exactly! And all that you and I believe worth having in
life--is no more to her--than to--to a monkey up a tree!"
Mrs. Dashwood spoke thoughtfully. "We've come from monkeys and Lady
Belinda thinks a great deal of her ancestry."
"Then you understand why I'm anxious? You can imagine----"
May moved her head in response, and then she suddenly turned her face
towards her aunt and said in the same voice in which she had imitated
Belinda before--
"If dull people like to be dull, it's no credit to 'em!"
Lady Dashwood laughed, but it was a hard bitter laugh.
"Oh, May, you understand. Well, for the twenty-four hours that Belinda
was here, she was on her best behaviour. You see, she had plans! You
know her habit of sponging for weeks on people--she finds herself
appreciated by the 'Nouveaux Riches.' Her title appeals to them. Well,
Belinda has never made a home for her one child--not she!"
Mrs. Dashwood's lips moved. "Poor child!" she said softly, and there was
something in her voice that made Lady Dashwood aware of what she had
momentarily forgotten in her excitement, that the arm resting on her
shoulder was the arm of a woman not yet thirty, whose home had suddenly
vanished. It had been riddled with bullets and left to die at the
retreat from Mons.
Lady Dashwood fell into a sudden silence.
"Go on, dear Aunt Lena," said May Dashwood.
"Well, dear," said Lady Dashwood, drawing in a deep breath, "Linda got
wind of my coming here to put Jim straight and she pounced down upon me
like a vulture, with Gwen, asked herself for one night, and then talked
of 'old days, etc.,' and how she longed for Gwen to see something of our
'old-world city.' So she simply made me keep the child for 'a couple of
days,' then 'a week,' and then 'ten days'--and how could I turn the
child out of doors? And so--I gave in--like a fool!" Then, after a
pause, Lady Dashwood exclaimed--"Imagine Belinda as Jim's
mother-in-law!"
"But why should she be?" asked May.
"That's the point. Belinda would prefer an American Wall Street man as a
son-in-law or a Scotch Whisky Merchant, but they're not so easily
got--it's a case of get what you can. So Jim is to be sacrificed."
"But why?" persisted May quietly.
"Why, because--although Jim has seen Belinda and heard her hard false
voice, he doesn't see what she is. He is too responsible to imagine
Belindas and too clever to imagine Gwens. Gwen is very pretty!"
May looked again into the fire.
"Now do you see what a weak fool I've been?" asked Lady Dashwood
fiercely.
"Lady Belinda will bleed him," said May.
"When Belinda is Jim's mother-in-law, he'll have to pay for
everything--even for her funeral!"
"Wouldn't her funeral expenses be cheap at any price?" asked May.
"They would," said Lady Dashwood. "How are we to kill her off? She'll
live--for ever!"
Then Mrs. Dashwood seemed to meditate briefly but very deeply, and at
the end of her short silence she asked--
"And where do I come in, Aunt Lena? What can I do for you?"
Lady Dashwood looked a little startled.
What May had actually got to do was: well, not to do anything but just
to be sweet and amusing as she always was. She had got to show the
Warden what a charming woman was like. And the rest, he had to do. He
had to be fascinated! Lady Dashwood could see a vision of Gwen and her
boxes going safely away from Oxford--even the name of Scott disappearing
altogether from the Warden's recollection.
But after that, what would happen? May too would have to go away. She
was still mourning for her husband--still dreaming at night of that
awful sudden news from France. May would, of course, go back to her work
and leave the Warden to--well--anything in the wide world was better
than "Belinda and Co." And it was this certainty that anything was
better than Belinda and Co., this passionate conviction, that had
filled Lady Dashwood's mind--to the exclusion of all other things.
It had not occurred to her that May would ask the definite question,
"What am I to do?" It was an awkward question.
"What I want you to do," said Lady Dashwood, speaking slowly, while she
swiftly sought in her mind for an answer that would be truthful and
yet--inoffensive. "Why, May, I want you to give me your moral support."
May looked away from the fire and contemplated the point of her boot,
and then she looked at the point of Lady Dashwood's shoe--they were both
on the fender rim side by side--May's right boot, Lady Dashwood's left
shoe.
"Your moral support," repeated Lady Dashwood. "Well, then you stay a
week. Many, many thanks. To-night I shall sleep well."
Lady Dashwood was conscious that "moral support" did not quite serve the
purpose she wanted, she had not quite got hold of the right words.
May's profile was absolutely in repose, but Lady Dashwood could feel
that she was pondering over that expression "moral support." So Lady
Dashwood was driven to repeat it once more. "Moral support," she said
very firmly. "Your moral support is what I want, dear May."
They had not heard the drawing-room door open, but they heard it close
although it was done softly, and both ladies turned away from the fire.
Gwendolen Scott had come in and was walking towards them, dressed in
white and looking very self-conscious and pretty.
"But you haven't told me," said Mrs. Dashwood tactfully, as if merely
continuing their talk, "who that portrait represents?"
"Oh, an old Warden," replied Lady Dashwood indifferently. "Moral
support" or not--the compact had been made. May was pledged for the
week. All was well! Lady Dashwood could look at Gwen now with an easy,
even an affectionate smile. "Gwen, let me introduce you to Mrs. Jack
Dashwood," she said.
Gwen had expected Mrs. Dashwood to be an elderly relative of the family
who would not introduce any new element into the Warden's little
household. She had not for a moment anticipated _this_! It was
disconcerting. Gwen was very much afraid of clever women, they moved and
looked and spoke as if they had been given a key "to the situation,"
though what that key was and what that situation exactly was Gwen did
not quite grasp.
Even the way in which Mrs. Dashwood put her hand out for a scarf she had
thrown on to a chair; the way she moved her feet, moved her head; the
way her plain black dress and the long plain coat hung about her, her
manner of looking at Gwen and accepting her as a person whom she was
about to know, all this mysterious "cachet" of her personality--made
Gwen uneasy. Besides this elegant woman was not exactly elderly--about
twenty-eight perhaps. Gwen was very much disconcerted at this unexpected
complication at the Lodgings--her life had been for the last few months
since she left school in July, crowded with difficulties.
"I don't think I want that man to speak," said Mrs. Dashwood, turning
her head to look back at the portrait.
"What a funny thing to say!" thought Gwen, about a mere portrait, and
she sniggled a little. "He's got a ghost," she said aloud. "Hasn't he,
Lady Dashwood?"
"No," said Lady Dashwood briefly. "He hasn't got a ghost. The college
has got a ghost----"
"Oh, yes," said Gwen, "I mean that, of course."
"If the ghost is--all that remains of the gentleman over the fireplace,"
said Mrs. Dashwood, "I hope he doesn't appear often." She was still
glancing back at the portrait.
"Isn't it exciting?" said Gwen. "The ghost appears whenever anything is
going to happen----"
"My dear Gwen," said Lady Dashwood, "in that case the ghost might as
well bring his bag and baggage and remain here."
"What sort of ghost?" asked Mrs. Dashwood.
"Oh, only an eighteenth-century ghost--the ghost of the college barber,"
said Lady Dashwood. "When that man was Warden, the college barber went
and cut his throat in the Warden's Library."
"What for?" asked Mrs. Dashwood simply.
"Because the Warden insisted on his doing the Fellows' hair in the new
elaborate style of the period--on his old wages."
Mrs. Dashwood pondered, still looking at the portrait.
"I should have cut the Warden's throat--not my own," she said, "if I
had, on my old wages, to curl and crimp instead of merely putting a bowl
on the gentlemen's heads and snipping round."
"But he had his revenge," said Gwen eagerly, "he comes and shows himself
in the Library when a Warden dies."
Lady Dashwood had not during these last few minutes been really thinking
of the Warden or of the college barber, nor of his ghost. She was
thinking that it was characteristic of Gwen to be excited by and
interested in a silly ghost story--and it was equally characteristic of
her to be unable to tell the story correctly.
"He is supposed to appear in the Library when anything disastrous is
going to happen to a Warden," she said, and no sooner were the words
out of her mouth than she paused and began thinking of what she was
saying. "Anything disastrous to a Warden!" She had not thought of the
matter before--Jim was now Warden! Anything disastrous! A marriage may
be a disaster. Death is not so disastrous as utter disappointment with
life and the pain of an empty heart!
"Come along, May," she said, trying to suppress a shiver that went
through her frame. "Come along, May. Goodness gracious, it's nearly
eight o'clock and we are going to dine at eight fifteen!"
"I can dress in two shakes," said May Dashwood.
"I've asked Mr. Boreham," said Lady Dashwood, pushing her niece gently
before her towards the door and blessing her--in her under-thoughts
("Bless you, May, dear dear May!"). "He talked so much about you the
other day," she went on aloud, "that when I got your wire--I felt bound
to ask him--I hope you don't mind."
"Nobody does mind Mr. Boreham," said May. "I haven't seen him--for
years."
"You know his aunt left him Chartcote, so he has taken to haunting
Oxford for the last three months. Talk of ghosts----"
Then the door closed behind the two ladies and Gwen was left alone in
the drawing-room. She went up to the clock. It was striking eight.
Fifteen minutes and nothing to do! She would go and see if there were
any letters. She went outside. Letters by the first post and by the last
post were all placed on a table at the head of the staircase. Gwen went
and looked at the table. Letters there were, all for the Warden! No!
there was one for her, from her mother. She opened it nervously. Was it
a scolding about losing that umbrella? Gwen began to read:
"My dear Gwen,
"I hope you understand that Lady Dashwood will keep you till the
3rd. You don't mention the Warden! Does that mean that you are
making no progress in that direction? Perhaps taking no trouble!
"The question is, where you will go on the 3rd?"
Here Gwen's heart gave a thump of alarm and dismay.
"It is all off with your cousin Bridget. She writes that she can't
have you, because she has to be in town unexpectedly. This is only
an excuse. I am disappointed but not surprised, after that record
behaviour to me when the war broke out and after promising that I
should be in her show in France, and then backing out of it. Exactly
why, I found out only yesterday! You remember that General X. had
actually to separate two of the 'angels' that were flitting about on
their work of mercy and had come to blows over it. Well, one of the
two was your cousin Bridget. That didn't get photographed in the
papers. It would have looked sweet. But now I'm going to give you a
scolding. Bridget did get wind of your muddling about at the
Ringwood's little hospital this summer, and spending all your time
and energy on a man who I told you was no use. What's the good of
talking any more about it? I've talked till I'm blue--and yet you
will no doubt go and do the same thing again.
"I ought not to have to tell you that if you do come across any
stray Undergraduates, don't go for them. Nothing will come of it.
Try and keep this in your noddle. Go for Dr. Middleton--men of that
age are often silliest about girls--and don't simply go mooning
along. Then why did you go and lose your umbrella? You have nothing
in this wide world to think of but to keep yourself and your baggage
together.
"It's the second you have lost this year. I can't afford another.
You must 'borrow' one. Your new winter rig-out is more than I can
afford. I'm being dunned for bills that have only run two years. Why
can't I make you realise all this? What is the matter with you? Give
the maid who waits on you half a crown, nothing to the butler. Lady
D. is sure to see you off--and you can leave the taxi to her. Leave
your laundry bill at the back of a drawer--as if you had mislaid it.
I will send you a P.O. for your ticket to Stow."
Here Gwen made a pause, for her heart was thumping loudly.
"There's nothing for it but to go to Nana's cottage at Stow for the
moment. I know it's beastly dull for you--but it's partly your own
fault that you are to have a dose of Stow. I'm full up for two
months and more, but I'll see what I can do for you at once. I am
writing to Mrs. Greenleafe Potten, to ask her if she will have you
for a week on Monday, but I'm afraid she won't. At Stow you won't
need anything but a few stamps and a penny for Sunday collection.
I've written to Nana. She only charges me ten shillings a week for
you. She will mend up your clothes and make two or three blouses for
you into the bargain. Don't attempt to help her. They must be done
properly. Get on with that flannelette frock for the Serb relief.
Address me still here.
"Your very loving,
"Mother."
Nana's cottage at Stow! Thatch smelling of the November rains; a stuffy
little parlour with a smoky fire. Forlorn trees outside shedding their
last leaves into the ditch at the side of the lane. Her old nurse,
nearly stone deaf, as her sole companion.
Gwen felt her knees trembling under her. Her eyes smarted and a great
sob came into her throat. She had no home. Nobody wanted her!