MR. BOREHAM'S PROPOSAL
Boreham's purpose had been thwarted for the moment. But there was still
time for him to make another effort, and this time it was to be a
successful effort.
A letter to May would have been the easiest way in which to achieve his
purpose, but Boreham shrank from leaving to posterity a written proposal
of marriage, because there always was just the chance that such a letter
might not be answered in the right spirit, and in that case the letter
would appear to future readers of Boreham's biography as an unsolicited
testimonial in favour of marriage--as an institution. So Boreham decided
to continue "feeling" his way!
After all, there was not very much time in which to feel the way, for
May was leaving Oxford on Monday. To-day was Friday, and Boreham knew
the King's party were going to chapel at Magdalen. If he went, too, it
would be possible for him to get May to himself on the way back to the
Lodgings (in the dark).
So to Magdalen he went, hurrying along on that Friday afternoon, and the
nearer he got to Magdalen the more sure he was that only fools lived in
the country; the more convinced he was that Chartcote had become, even
in three months, a hateful place.
Boreham was nearly late, he stumbled into the ante-chapel just as they
were closing the doors with solemn insistence. He uncovered his head as
he entered, and his nostrils were struck with a peculiar odour of stone
and mortar; a sense of space around him and height above him; also with
the warmth of some indefinable sense of community of purpose that
annoyed him. He was, indeed, already warm enough physically with his
haste in coming; he was also spiritually in a glow with the
consciousness of his own magnanimity and toleration. Here was the
enlightened Boreham entering a temple where they repeated "Creeds
outworn." Here he was entering it without any exhibition of violent
hostility or even of contempt. He was entering it decorously, though not
without some speed. He was warm and did not wish to be made warmer.
What he had not anticipated, and what disappointed him, was that from
the ante-chapel he could not see whether the Dashwoods were in the
Chapel or not. The screen and organ loft were in the way, they blocked
his vision, and not having any "permit" for the Chapel, he had to remain
in the ante-chapel, and just hope for the best. He seated himself as
near to the door as he could, on the end of the back bench, already
crowded. There he disposed of his hat and prepared himself to go through
with the service.
Boreham did not, of course, follow the prayers or make any responses; he
merely uttered a humming noise with the object of showing his mental
aloofness, and yet impressing the fact of his presence on the devout
around him.
Many a man who has a conscientious objection to prayer, likes to hear
himself sing. But Boreham's singing voice was not altogether under his
own control. It was as if the machinery that produced song was mislaid
somewhere down among his digestive organs and had got rusted, parts of
it being actually impaired.
It had been, in his younger days, a source of regret to Boreham that he
could never hope to charm the world by song as well as by words. As he
grew older that regret faded, and was now negligible.
Is there any religious service in the world more perfect than evensong
at Magdalen? Just now, in the twilight of the ante-chapel, a twilight
faintly lit above at the spring of the groined roof, the voices of the
choir rose and fell in absolute unison, with a thrill of subdued
complaint; a complaint uttered by a Hebrew poet dead and gone these many
years, a complaint to the God of his fathers, the only true God.
Boreham marked time (slightly out of time) muttering--
"Tum/tum tum/ti:
Tum/tum tum/tum ti/tum?"
loud enough to escape the humiliation of being confounded with those
weak-minded strangers who are carried away (in spite of their reason) by
the charm of sacerdotal blandishments.
He stood there among the ordinary church-goers, conscious that he was a
free spirit. He was happy. At least not so much happy as agreeably
excited by the contrast he made with those around him, and excited, too,
at what was going to happen in about half an hour. That is, if May
Dashwood was actually behind that heavy absurd screen in the Chapel. He
went on "tum-ing" as if she was there and all was well.
And within the chapel, in one of those deep embrasures against the
walls, was May Dashwood. But she was alone. Lady Dashwood had been too
tired to come with her, and Gwendolen had been hurried off to Potten End
immediately after lunch, strangely reluctant to go. So May had come to
the Chapel alone, and, not knowing that Boreham was in the ante-chapel
waiting for her, she had some comfort in the seclusion and remoteness of
that sacred place. Not that the tragedy of the world was shut out and
forgotten, as it is in those busy market-places where men make money and
listen too greedily to the chink of coin to hear any far-off sounds from
the plain of Armageddon. May got comfort, not because she had forgotten
the tragedy of the world and was soothed by soft sounds, but because
that tragedy was remembered in this hour of prayer; because she was
listening to the cry of the Hebrew poet, uttered so long ago and echoed
now by distressful souls who feel just as he felt the desperate problem
of human suffering and the desire for peace.
"Why art thou so vexed, O my soul;
And why art thou so disquieted within me?"
And then the answer; an answer which to some is meaningless, but which,
to the seeker after the "things that are invisible," is the only
answer--the answer that the soul makes to itself--
"O put thy trust in God!"
* * * * *
May observed no one in the Chapel; she saw nothing but the written words
in the massive Prayer-book on the desk before her; and when at last the
service was over, she came out looking neither to right nor left, and
was startled to find herself emerging into the fresh air with Boreham by
her side, claiming her company back to the Lodgings.
It was just dusk and the moon was rising in the east. Though it could
not be seen, its presence was visible in the thin vaporous lightness of
the sky. The college buildings stood out dimly, as if seen by a pallid
dawn.
"You leave Oxford on Monday?" began Boreham, as they went through the
entrance porch out into the High and turned to the right.
"Yes," said May, and a sigh escaped her. That Boreham noticed.
"I don't deny the attractions of Oxford," he said. "All I object to is
its pretensions."
"You don't like originality," murmured May.
She was thinking of the slums of London where she worked. What a
contrast with this noble street! Why should men be allowed to build dens
and hovels for other men to live in? Why should men make ugliness and
endure squalor?
"I thought you knew me better," said Boreham, reproachfully, "than to
say that."
"If you do approve of originality," said May, "then why not let Oxford
work out its own evolution, in its own way?"
"It needs entire reconstruction," said Boreham, stubbornly.
"You would like to pass everything through a mill and turn it out to a
pattern," said May. "But that's not the way the world progresses. Entire
reconstruction would spoil Oxford. What it wants is what we all
want--the pruning of our vices and the development of our virtues. We
don't want to be shorn of all that makes up our personality."
Boreham said, "That is a different matter; but why should we argue?"
"To leave Oxford and speak of ourselves, of you and me," said May,
persisting. "You don't want to be made like me; but we both want to have
the selfishness squeezed out of us. There! I warn you that, having once
started, I shall probably go on lamenting like the prophet Jeremiah
until I reach the Lodgings! So if you want to escape, do find some
pressing engagement. I shan't be offended in the very least."
How she longed for him to go! But was he capable of discovering this
even when it was broadly hinted?
Boreham's beard moved irritably. The word "selfish" stung him. There was
no such thing as being "unselfish"--one man wanted one thing, another
man wanted another--and there you are!
"Human nature is selfish," he retorted. "Saints are selfish. They want
to have a good time in the next world. Each man always wants to please
himself, only tastes differ."
Boreham spoke in emphatic tones. If May was thinking of her husband,
then this piece of truth must be put before her without delay. War
widows had the habit of speaking of their husbands as heroes, when all
they had done was to have got themselves blown to pieces while they were
trying to blow other people to pieces.
"You make questions of taste very important," said May, looking down the
misty street. "Some men have a taste for virtue and generosity, and
others have taste for vice and meanness."
Boreham looked at her features closely in the dim light.
"Are you angry with me?" he asked.
"Not at all," said May. "We are arguing about words. You object to the
use of the word 'selfish,' so I adopt your term 'taste.'"
"There's no reason why we should argue just now," said Boreham. "Not
that argument affects friendship! Friendship goes behind all that,
doesn't it?" He asked this anxiously.
"I don't expect my friends to agree with me in all points," said May,
smiling. "That would be very selfish!" She laughed. "I beg your pardon.
I mean that my taste in friends is pretty catholic," and here Boreham
detected a sudden coldness in her voice.
"Friendship--I will say more than that--love--has nothing to do with
'points of view,'" he began hastily. "A man may fall in love with a
woman as she passes his window, though he may never exchange a word with
her. Such things have happened."
"And it is just possible," suggested May, "that a protracted
conversation with the lady might have had the effect of destroying the
romance."
Here Boreham felt a wave of fear and hope and necessity surge through
his whole being. The moment had arrived!
"Not if you were the lady," he said in a convinced tone.
May still gazed down the street, etherealised beyond its usual beauty in
this thin pale light.
"I don't think any man, however magnanimous, could stand a woman long if
she made protracted lamentations after the manner of Jeremiah," she
said.
"You are purposely speaking ill of yourself," said Boreham. "Yet,
whatever you do or say makes a man fall in love with you." He was
finding words now without having to think.
"I was not aware of it," said May, rather coldly.
"It is true," he persisted. "You are different from other women; you are
the only woman I have ever met whom I wanted to marry."
It was out! Not as well put as he would have liked, but it was out. Here
was a proposal of marriage by word of mouth. Here was the orthodox
woman's definite opportunity. May would see the seriousness of it now.
"As a personal friend of yours," said May, and her tone was not as
serious as he had feverishly hoped, "I do not think you are consulting
your own interests at this moment, Mr. Boreham."
"No!" began Boreham. "Not mine exclusively----"
"Your remark was hasty--ill considered," she said, interrupting him.
"You don't really want to marry. You would find it an irksome bondage,
probably dull as well as irksome."
"Not with you!" exclaimed Boreham, and he touched her arm.
May's arm became miraculously hard and unsympathetic.
"Marriage is a great responsibility," she said.
"I have thought that all out," said Boreham. "There may be----"
"Then you know," she replied, "that it means----"
"I have calculated the cost," he said. "I am willing----"
"You have not only to save your own soul but to help some one else to
save theirs," she went on. "You have to exercise justice and mercy. You
have to forgive every day of your life, and"--she added--"to be
forgiven. Wouldn't that bore you?"
Boreham's heart thumped with consternation. It might take months to make
her take a reasonable view of marriage. She was more difficult than he
had anticipated.
"Marriage is a dreary business," continued May, "unless you go into it
with much prayer and fasting--Jeremiah again."
Into Boreham's consternation broke a sudden anger.
"That is why," continued May, "Herod ordered Mariamne to be beheaded,
and why the young woman who married the 'beloved disciple' said she
couldn't realise her true self and went off with Judas Iscariot." May
turned round and looked at him as she spoke.
"I was serious!" burst out Boreham.
"Not more serious than I am," said May; "I am serious enough to treat
the subject you have introduced with the fearless criticism you consider
right to apply to all important subjects. You ought to approve!"
And yet she smiled just a little at the corners of her mouth, because
she knew that, when Boreham demanded the right of every man to criticise
fearlessly--what he really had in his mind was the vision of himself,
Boreham, criticising fearlessly. He thought of himself, for instance, as
trying to shame the British public for saying slimily: "Let's pretend
to be monogamous!" He thought of himself calling out pluckily: "Here,
you self-satisfied humbugs, I'm going to say straight out--we ain't
monogamous----"
He never contemplated May Dashwood coming and saying to him: "And are
_you_ not a self-satisfied humbug, pretending that there is no courage,
no endurance, no moral effort superior to your own?" It was this that
made May smile a little.
"The fact remains," he said, feeling his way hotly, blindly, "that a man
can, and does, make a woman happy, if he loves her. All I ask," he went
on, "is to be allowed the chance of doing this, and you gibe."
"I don't gibe," said May, "I'm preaching. And, after all, I ought not to
preach, because marriage does not concern me--directly. I shall not
marry again, Mr. Boreham."
Boreham stared hard at her and his eyebrows worked. All she had just
been saying provoked his anger; it disagreed with him, made him dismal,
and yet, at least, he had no rival! She hadn't got hold of any so-called
saint as a future husband. Middleton hadn't been meddling, nor Bingham,
and there was no shadowy third anywhere in town. She was heart free!
That was something!
There was the dead husband, of course, but his memory would fade as time
went on. "Just now, people who are dead or dying, are in the swim,"
thought Boreham; "but just wait till the war is over!" He swiftly
imagined publishers and editors of journals refusing anything that
referred to the war or to any dismal subject connected with it. The
British public would have no use for the dead when the war was over. The
British public would be occupied with the future; how to make money, how
to spend it. Stories about love and hate among the living would be
wanted, or pleasant discourses about the consolations of religion and
blessed hopes of immortality for those who were making the money and
spending it!
Boreham sneered as he thought this, and yet he himself desired intensely
that men, and especially women, should forget the dead, and, above all,
that May should forget her dead and occupy herself in being a pretty and
attractive person of the female sex.
"I will wait," said Boreham, eagerly; "I won't ask you for an answer
now."
"Now you know my position, you will not put any question to me!" said
May, very quietly.
There came a moment's oppressive silence.
"I may continue to be your friend," he demanded; "you won't punish me?"
and his voice was urgent.
"Of course not," she said.
"I may come and see you?" he urged again.
"Any friends of mine may come and see me, if they care to," she said;
"but I am very much occupied during the day--and tired in the evenings."
"Sundays?" he interrupted.
"My Sundays I spend with friends in Surrey."
Boreham jerked his head nervously. "I shall be living in Town almost
immediately," he said; "I will come and see what times would be
convenient."
"I am very stupid when my day's work is done," said May.
"Stupid!" Boreham laughed harshly. "But your work is too hard and most
unsuitable. Any woman can attend to babies."
"I flatter myself," said May, "that I can wash a baby without forgetting
to dry it."
"Why do you hide yourself?" he exclaimed. "Why do you throw yourself
away?" He felt that, with her beside him, he could dictate to the world
like a god. "Why don't you organise?"
"Do you mean run about and talk," asked May, "and leave the work to
other people? Don't you think that we are beginning to hate people who
run about and talk?"
"Because the wrong people do it," said Boreham.
"The people who do it are usually the wrong people," corrected May; "the
right people are generally occupied with skilled work--technical or
intellectual. That clears the way for the unskilled to run about and
talk, and so the world goes round, infinite labour and talent quietly
building up the Empire, and idleness talking about it and interrupting
it."
Boreham stared at her with petulant admiration. "You could do anything,"
he said bluntly.
"I shall put an advertisement into the _Times_," said May. "'A
gentlewoman of independent means, unable to do any work properly, but
anxious to organise.'"
They had now turned into a narrow lane and were almost at the gates of
the Lodgings. May did not want Boreham to come into the Court with her,
she wanted to dismiss him now. She had a queer feeling of dislike that
he should tread upon the gravel of the Court, and perhaps come actually
to the front door of the Lodgings. She stopped and held out her hand.
"I have your promise," he said, "I can come and see you?" He looked
thwarted and miserable.
"If you happen to be in town," she said.
"But I mean to live there," he said. This insinuation on her part, that
she had not accepted the fact that he was going to live in town, was
unsympathetic of her. "I can't stand the loneliness of Chartcote, it has
become intolerable."
The word "loneliness" melted May. She knew what loneliness meant. After
all, how could he help being the man he was? Was it his fault that he
had been born with his share of the Boreham heredity? Was he able to
control his irritability, to suppress his exaggerated self-esteem; both
of them, perhaps, symptoms of some obscure form of neurosis?
May felt a pang of pity for him. His face showed signs of pain and
discontent and restlessness.
"I shall leave Chartcote any day, immediately. London draws me back to
it. I can think there. I can't at Chartcote, the atmosphere is sodden at
Chartcote, my neighbours are clods."
May looked at him anxiously. "It is dull for you," she said.
Encouraged by this he went on rapidly. "Art, literature is nothing to
them. They are centaurs. They ought to eat grass. They don't know a
sunset from a swede. They don't know the name of a bird, except game
birds; they are ignorant fools, they are damned----" Boreham's breathing
was loud and rapid.
"And yet you hate Oxford," murmured May, as she held out her hand. She
still did not mean Boreham to come inside the Court, her hand was a
dismissal.
"Because Oxford is so smug," said Boreham. "And the country is smug.
England is the land that begets effeteness and smuggishness. Yes, I
should be pretty desperate," he added, and he held her hand with some
pressure--"I should be pretty desperate, only you have promised to let
me come and see you."
May withdrew her hand. "As a friend," she said. "Yes, come as a friend."
Boreham gave a curious toss to his head. "I am under your orders," he
said, "I obey. You don't wish me to come with you to the door--I obey!"
"Thank you," said May, simply. "And if you are lonely, well, so am I.
There are many lonely people in this world just now, and many, many
lonely women!" She turned away and left him.
Boreham raced rather than walked away from the Lodgings towards the
stables where he had put up his horse. He hardly knew what his thoughts
were. He was more strangely moved than he had ever thought he could be.
And how solitary he was! What permanent joy is there in the world, after
all? There _is_ nothing permanent in life! It takes years to find that
out--years--if you are well in health and full of vanity! But you do
find it out--at last.
As he went headlong he came suddenly against an obstacle. Somebody
caught him by the arm and slowed him down.
"Hullo, Boreham!" said Bingham. "Stop a moment!"
Boreham allowed himself to be fastened upon, and suffered Bingham's arm
to rest on his, but he puffed with irritation. He felt like a poet who
has been interrupted in a fit of inspiration.
"I thought this was one of your War Office days," he said bluntly.
"It is," replied Bingham, in his sweetest curate tones. "But there is
special College business to-day, and I'm putting in an extra day next
week instead. Look here, do you want a job of work?"
No, of course, Boreham didn't.
"I'm leaving Chartcote," he said, and was glad to think it was true.
"This week?" asked Bingham.
"No," said Boreham, suddenly wild with indignation, "but any time--next
week, perhaps."
"This job will only take four or five days," said Bingham.
"What job?" demanded Boreham.
"There's a small library just been given us by the widow of a General."
"Didn't know soldiers ever read books," said Boreham.
"I don't know if he read them," said Bingham, "but there they are. We
want some one to look through them--put aside the sort suitable for
hospitals, and make a _catalogue raisonne_ of the others for the camps
in Germany."
Boreham wanted to say, "Be damned with your _raisonne_," but he limited
himself to saying: "Can't you get some college chaplain, or some bloke
of the sort to do it?"
"All are thick busy," said Bingham--"those that are left."
"It must be a new experience for them," said Boreham.
"There are plenty of new experiences going," said Bingham.
"And you won't deny," said Boreham, smiling the smile of
self-righteousness, as he tried to assume a calm bantering tone, "that
experience--of life, I mean--is a bit lacking in Oxford?"
"It depends on what you mean," said Bingham, sweetly. "We haven't the
experience of making money here. Also Oxford Dons are expected to go
about with the motto 'Pereunt et imputantur' written upon our brows (see
the sundial in my college), 'The hours pass and we must give an account
of them.'"
Bingham always translated his Latin, however simple, for Boreham's
benefit. Just now this angered Boreham.
"This motto," continued Bingham, "isn't for ornament but for an example.
In short, my dear man, we avoid what I might call, for want of a more
comprehensive term, the Pot-house Experience of life."
Boreham threw back his head.
"Well, you'll take the job, will you?" and Bingham released his arm.
"Can't you get one of those elderly ladies who frequent lectures during
their lifetime to do the job?"
"We may be reduced to that," said Bingham, "but even they are busy. It's
a nice job," he added enticingly.
"I know what it will be like," grunted Boreham, and he hesitated. If May
Dashwood had been staying on in Oxford it would have been different, but
she was going away. So Boreham hesitated.
"Telephone me this evening, will you?" said Bingham.
"Very well," said Boreham. "I'll see what I have got on hand, and if I
have time----" and so the two men parted.
Boreham got into his gig with a heavy heart and drove back to Chartcote.
How he hated the avenue that cut him off from the world outside. How he
hated the clean smell of the country that came into his windows. How he
hated to see the moon, when it glinted at him from between the tops of
trees. He longed for streets, for the odour of dirt and of petrol and of
stale-cooked food.
The noise of London soothed him, the jostling of men and women; he
hungered for it. And yet he did not love those human beings. He knew
their weaknesses, their superstitions, their follies, their unreason!
Boreham remembered a much over-rated Hebrew (possibly only a mythical
figure) who once said to His followers that when they prayed they should
say: "Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass
against us."
He got out of his gig slowly. "I don't forgive them," he said, and,
unconscious of his own sins, he walked up the steps into his lonely
house.