|Then you won't join us?” said the Junior Dean.
“I can't say definitely,” replied Raine Chetwynd, rubbing his meerschaum
bowl on his coat-sleeve.
“You had better,” urged the other. “We can make our arrangements fit
into yours, if you'll give us timely notice. Put aside a fortnight in
July or August, and we will keep all the plums for then. You see we must
have dates beforehand, on account of the guides.”
“Quite so,” Raine assented; “and it's very good of you, Rogers. But
somehow I shouldn't care to tie myself down. I am not certain how long
I may be likely to stay in Switzerland; and I have half promised the
Professor to take him away somewhere, if he has had enough of Geneva.
No; you fellows make your own arrangements without reference to me. Tell
me your dates, and I'll very probably happen upon you and take my chance
of what's going.”
The Junior Dean did not press the matter. Chetwynd was not a man to be
governed by caprice, and doubtless had excellent reasons for not
wishing to make a specific engagement. But Raine thought it necessary to
apologize. He got up, and walked to the open window.
“Don't think me a disagreeable beast.”
The Junior Dean, laughed, and came and leant on the sill by his side.
“No one could be disagreeable on a day like this.”
The window gave upon the College Gardens. The lawn was flooded with
sunlight, save for the splashes of shade under the two flowering
chestnut-trees. The fresh voices of some girls up for Commemoration rose
through the quiet afternoon air; the faint tinkle of a piano was heard
from some rooms in the grey pile on the left that stood cool in shadow.
The two men stood side by side for a long time without speaking, Raine
leaning on his elbow, blowing great puffs of smoke that curled lazily
outwards in the stillness, and the Junior Dean with his hands behind his
back.
“We ought to be accounted happy,” said the latter, meditatively. “This
life of ours--”
“Yes, it approaches Euthanasia sometimes,” replied Raine,
allusively--“or it would, if one gave way to it.”
“I can't see that,” rejoined the other. “A life of scholarly ease is
not death--the charm of it lies in its perfect mingling of cloistered
seclusion with the idyllic. Here, for instance”--with a wave of a
delicate hand--“is Arden without its discomforts.”
“I am afraid I am not so 'deep-contemplative' as you,” said Raine, with
a smile, “and the idyllic always strikes me as a bit flimsy. I never
could lie under a tree and pretend to read Theocritus. I'd sooner read
Rabelais over a fire.”
“I think you're ungrateful, Chetwynd. Where, out of Oxford--Cambridge,
perhaps--could you get a scene like this? And not the scene alone, but
the subtle spirit of it? It seems always to me thought-haunted. We have
grown so used to it that we do not appreciate sufficiently the perfect
conditions around us for the development of all that is spiritual in
us--apart from 'the windy ways of men.'”
“The 'windy ways of men' are very much better for us, if you ask me,”
replied Raine. “I mean 'men' really and not technically,” he added, with
a smile and a thought of undergraduate vanity.
“Ah, but with this as a haven of refuge--the grey walls, the cool
cloisters, the peaceful charm of rooms like these looking out on to
these beautiful, untroubled gardens.”
“I don't know,” said Raine. “Loving Oxford as I do, I sometimes breathe
more freely out of it. There is too much intellectual _mise en scène_ in
all this. If you get it on your mind that you are expected to live up
to it, you are rapidly qualifying yourself for the newest undergraduate
culture-society, at a college that shall be nameless. Many a man is
ruined by it.”
“But, my dear Chetwynd,” said the Junior Dean, “there is a difference
between loving 'to walk the studious cloysters pale' and intellectual
priggishness.”
“Doubtless. But it isn't everyone who can walk honestly. The danger
lies in finding another fellow doing the same. Then the two of you join
together and say how beautiful it is, and you call in a third to share
the sensation, and you proceed to admire yourselves as being vastly
superior meditative persons. Then finally, according to modern instinct,
you throw it into a Pale Cloyster Company, Limited, which is Anathema.”
“Switzerland will do you good, Chetwynd,” remarked the Junior
Dean quickly. “Particularly as your mind is so disorganized as to
misinterpret Milton.”
Raine laughed, stretched himself lazily after the manner of big men, and
lounged back on the window-sill, his hands in his pockets.
“I don't care. I'd misinterpret anybody--even you. I've had enough of
Oxford for a time. You see I have had a long spell since January. There
were Entrance Scholarships and a lot of bursarial work for Evans to be
done that kept me up nearly all the Easter vacation. I suppose you are
right. I want a change.”
“The mountain air would be better for you than a stuffy town.”
“Oh, good gracious!” laughed Raine, swelling out his deep chest, “I am
healthy enough. You don't presume to say I am pale with overwork!”
“No,” said the Junior Dean, mentally contrasting his own spare form with
his colleague's muscular development. “You have a constitution like an
ox. But you would get better air into your lungs and better rest in your
mind.”
“Well, perhaps you are right,” said Raine. “Anyhow, if Geneva gets too
hot for me, I can come to you and sit on the top of the Jungfrau with
some snow on my head and get cool.”
The Junior Dean, in spite of his sentiment, was a man of the world,
and he scented a metaphor in Raine's speech. He glanced at him keenly
through his _pince-nez_. Whereupon Raine burst out laughing and took him
by the arm.
“Look here, are you going to put in an appearance at the St. John's
garden-party?”
“Yes.”
“Well, time is getting on. Let us go.”
And on their way thither down the Broad, they discussed the Masonic
Ball, the results of the Schools, the prospects of the cricket match,
and kindred subjects, such as are dear to the hearts of dons in summer
time.
The first person that Raine met at the Garden Party was his cousin, Mrs.
Monteith. She skilfully disposed of a couple of pretty nieces she was
chaperoning to some passing undergraduates, and walked up and down the
lawn by his side.
She was a small, pretty, keen-faced woman, some two or three years his
senior. Once upon a time she had fostered a conviction that Raine and
herself had been born for one another, and had sought to share his
soul's secrets. As long as she depended upon his initiative, all went
well; but one day, having forced open a scrupulously locked apartment,
she recoiled in pained surprise. Whereupon she decided that she had
mistaken the intentions of the Creator, and forthwith married Dr.
Monteith, whose soul's secrets were as neatly docketed and catalogued
as the slips of his unfinished Homeric Lexicon. But she always claimed
a vested interest in Raine's welfare, which he, in a laughing, contented
way, was pleased to allow.
“So you're off to Switzerland,” she said. “What are you going to do
there, besides seeing Uncle Louis?”
“Rest,” he replied. “Live in a pension and rest.”
“You'll find it dismally uninteresting. How long are you going to stay
there?”
“Possibly most of the Long.”
Mrs. Monteith opened her eyes and stopped twirling her parasol.
“My dear Raine! In Geneva?”
“My dear Nora, I really don't see anything in that to create such
surprise. I've just had Rogers expressing himself on the subject. Why
shouldn't I live in Geneva? What objection have you?”
“If you talk to me in that vehement way you will make people fancy you
are declaring a hopeless passion for me.”
“Let them,” said Raine, “they won't be greater fools than I am.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Oh, don't be alarmed. I am not going to declare myself. I wonder
whether you would laugh at me, if I told you something.”
“It would depend whether it were funny or not.”
“That would be a matter of opinion,” he replied with a smile.
“Well, first let me know in what capacity I am to listen to it.”
“As guide, philosopher, and friend,” he said. “Let us get out of the way
of these people. There are the Kennets bearing down upon us.”
They found a garden seat in a secluded corner under a tree, and sat
down. Mrs. Monteith laid her gloved fingers on his arm.
“Don't tell me it's about a woman, please.”
“How did you know it's about a woman?”
“My dear boy, you wouldn't drag me to this sequestered wilderness if it
were about a man! Of course it's a woman. You have it written all over
your face. Well?”
“If you are not sympathetic I shan't tell you.”
“Oh, Raine!”
She moved a little nearer to him, and settled her skirts. When a woman
settles her skirts by a man's side it impresses him with a sense of
confidential relations.
“Nora,” he said, “when a man doesn't know whether he is in love or not,
what is the best thing he can do?”
“The best thing is to make up his mind that he isn't. The next best is
to find out.”
“Then I am going to do the next best thing. I am going to Geneva to find
out.”
“And how long have you been like this?”
“Since January.”
“Why didn't you tell me before?”
“Because I did not relish telling it to myself. Now I have acknowledged
it, I have been pulling the petals off the marguerite, in a kind of
inverse way, for months, and the pastime has palled. The dear old man
thinks I am going solely for his sake, and I feel rather a humbug. But
of course--well--”
“Most of us are.”
“What?”
“Humbugs,” replied the lady sweetly. “Come, honour bright. Don't you
know whether you are in love or not?”
“No.”
“Would you like to be?”
“I don't quite know. That's the irritating part about it.”
“Oh, I see! Then it's a question of the lady's desirability. Oh, Raine,
I know these pensions. I hope it isn't a Polish countess with two
poodles and a past. Tell me, what is she like?”
“Well, to tell you the truth,” he replied, with a strange conjuncture
of a humorous twinkle in his eyes and a deprecatory smile, “it is
impossible to say.”
“Why?”
“Because she isn't one, but two.”
“Two what?”
“Two individuals.”
“And you don't know which one to fall in love with?”
Raine nodded, lounging with arms extended along the back of the seat.
Mrs. Monteith looked at him in silence for a few moments, and then broke
into rippling laughter.
“This is delicious. [Greek 3098-1] like the warrior in Anacreon!”
“Don't quote, Nora,” said Raine. “It is one of your bad habits. You
are trying enough with your list of first lines of Horace; but you know
nothing at all about Anacreon.”
“I do!” she cried, wheeling round to face him. “Joshua was correcting
the proofs of his edition during our honeymoon. I used to make him
translate them--it was a way of getting him to make love to me. There!
Now I'll repeat it:” [Greek 3098-2]
“Oh, my dear Raine, it is too delicious! You, of all people in the
world!”
“Then your verdict is that I am supremely ridiculous?”
“I am afraid I must say it strikes me in that light.”
“Thanks,” said Raine serenely. “That was what I was trying to get at.
I have been jesting a little, but there is a substratum of truth in my
confession. You confirm me in my own opinion--I am supremely ridiculous.
I like to make certain of things. It is so futile to have this
complicated state of mind--I hate it.”
“Do you?” said Mrs. Monteith. “How different from a woman; there is
nothing she enjoys more.”
After Raine had taken her back to her charges, he remained to exchange
a few civilities with the St. John's people and their wives, and then
strolled back to his own college. He mounted his staircase, with a smile
on his lips, recalling his conversation with his cousin. How far had he
been in earnest? He could scarcely tell. Certainly both Katherine and
Felicia had attracted him during his Christmas visit. He had been thrown
into more intimate contact with them than he usually was with women.
Perhaps that was the reason that they stood out distinct against the
half-known feminine group whom he was accustomed to meet at the crowded
afternoon receptions to which Oxford society is addicted. Perhaps, too,
the fact of his going from Oxford, where men are a glut in the market,
to the Pension Boccard, where they are at an extravagant premium,
had something to do with it. Some unsuspected index in his robust
organization was sensitive to the sudden leap in values. Whatever was
the reason, he retained a vivid impression of the two personalities,
and, as he had written to his father--in the same half-jesting strain
as he had talked with his cousin--he found himself bound to admit that
filial duty was not the only magnet that attracted him to Geneva. As
for his disinclination to bind himself to a definite mountaineering
engagement with Rogers and his party, he was glad of these nebulous
fancies as affording him a conscientious reason. The Junior Dean was
an excellent fellow and an Alpine enthusiast, but he was apt to be
academic, even on the top of the Jungfrau.
These considerations were running lightly through his mind as he sat
down to his desk to finish off some tutorial work before dinner, in the
little inner room which he made his sanctuary, whither undergraduates
only penetrated for strictly business purposes. The outer keeping-room
was furnished with taste and comfort for the general eye, but here
Raine kept such things as were nearly connected with his own life. As
he wrote, he idly took up an ivory paper-knife in his left hand, and
pressed it against his cheek.
He paused to think, looked mechanically at the paper-knife, and then
lost himself in a day-dream. For the bit of ivory had taken him back
many years--to the days when he had just entered on his manhood.
He started, threw down his pen, and leant back in his chair, a shadow of
earnestness over his face.
“That was the boy,” he said, half aloud. “What would it be for the man?
If this foolishness is serious--as the other--”
And, after a few seconds, he clapped both hands down on the leather arms
of his chair.
“It _is_ both equally--it must be--I'll swear that it is! And so there's
nothing in it.”
He pushed aside his unfinished schedule, and took a sheet of note-paper
from the stationery-case.
_“My dear Nora,” he wrote, “I have been thinking you may have
misunderstood my rubbish this afternoon. So don't think I propose
anything so idiotic as a search for a wife. Remember there are two, and
there is safety in numbers. If you will go over to Geneva and make a
third attraction, you may be absolutely unconcerned as to the safety of_
_“Your affectionate cousin,_
_“Raine Chetwynd.”_
When he had tossed the letter into the tray for the next post, he felt
relieved, and went on with his work.
But the next morning he received a note by hand from Mrs. Monteith,
which he tore up wrathfully into little pieces and threw into the
waste-paper basket.
It ran:--
“My dear Raine,--Men are the funniest creatures! I laughed over your
letter till I cried.
“Your affectionate cousin,
“Nora Monteith.”
Which shows how a woman can know your mind from a sample, when you
yourself are in doubt with the whole piece before you.