NOT only the entire county of ——shire but even the whole University of
Cambridge had been thrown into quite a whirl of emotion by the marriage
of Henry Waring and Grace Selwyn, the most unexpected ever concocted in
heaven or on earth.
A Senior Wrangler and a Fellow of his college, who at twenty-six, eats,
drinks, and sleeps mathematics, besides being possessed of other
devouring passions for certain of the minor sciences, does not seem a
very fit subject for matrimony with its petty follies and cares.
If one is, besides, the son of a cynic and a bookworm, who loathed and
eschewed the sex with bitter reason, and whose own practical knowledge
had been gained chiefly through the classics and the bedmakers, the one
of which appeals but little to one’s sense of propriety, the other still
less to one’s fleshly sense, the prospect of a domestic and patriarchal
career must seem as remote as it is undesirable.
And yet Henry Waring found himself, to his constant and increasing
bewilderment, embarked on one almost before he altogether knew where he
was.
The year previous to his marriage he had suffered a good deal from
ennui. A favourite theory in geology over which he had peered himself
half blind, was suddenly exploded without hope of reconstruction. He
felt rather lost and _distrait_, and cast about for some tangible solid
brainwork.
But to pass the time until the fresh inspiration came on, he took to
propounding stray problems, and—through the press—launching them
broadcast over the land. Strange to say, he got answers, and by the
score. A good many more “mute inglorious Solons” infest our villages
than we have any notion of.
Mr. Waring groaned in spirit and mourned over the depravity of the race
as he read their epistles, and drew farther back than ever into his
shell. If the average man and woman without the academical walls
resembled these productions, the less one had to do with them the
better, he very reasonably reflected.
After this had been going on for the space of three months, he came, one
morning, down to breakfast. He felt very sick at heart; his pupils
seemed so amazingly full of enthusiasm for minor concerns, and so
absolutely lacking in it for the one thing needful, that he was cut to
the quick and moved to much gentle wrath. And then these letters! They
were fast becoming his Nemesis.
He ate his breakfast and watched with unwonted pleasure some dust motes
dancing in a sunbeam, and raising his eyes to follow them, they
unconsciously strayed farther out into the college quad, where the dew
was still sparkling on every grass blade, and shimmering on every
flower.
Mr. Waring felt quite cheerful and revived as he pushed away his plate
and cup and began to open his letters. Letter after letter was laid
down, a spasm of pain passing each time across his face, and more than
once an audible groan escaped him.
At last he picked up a letter gingerly, as he handled all this variety
of correspondence—the village mathematician being an unclean beast—but
this letter seemed somehow different, he turned it over with growing
interest, and even took the pains to examine the postmark, then he
opened it and found a quite different production from any he had yet
received.
First on opening it a curious indefinite scent struck on his nostrils.
He sniffed it up perplexedly; some queer old memories began to stir in
him, and he paused a moment to try and classify them, but he could not,
so he set himself to examine the contents of the missive.
The answer given to his problem was accurate and the accompanying
remarks clear, strong, and to the point, written in a woman’s hand and
signed with a woman’s name, “Grace Selwyn”.
That letter was answered before the breakfast things were cleared away,
and certain fresh problems enclosed which were not sent in any other
direction.
Many letters went and came after that, containing problems and their
answers, the answers always full of that strange, vague, delicious
scent, which seemed to waft itself through the study and to remain
there, caught with the dust motes in the sunbeam.
A longing and a yearning for those little notes began to take possession
of Henry Waring and to disturb his mind. Old memories of the time when
he wore frocks and toddled, began to haunt him, and his work was no
longer done by reflex action.
He consulted a doctor, but as he only confided half his symptoms to that
scientific person, quite suppressing the letters, the doctor felt rather
out of it and prescribed quinine, which had no effect whatsoever.
One morning the yearning for a letter grew suddenly quite overmastering;
and none came. This was the climax. By a sudden impulse which he never
succeeded in explaining to himself on any satisfactory grounds, Mr.
Waring went to his bedroom, knelt down by his big chest of drawers, and
proceeded to pack a little valise with every article he did not want,
leaving out all those he did. Then he stepped into a cab and made for
the station.
Towards the close of the day he presented himself at the door of a queer
old red-brick manor house in Kent owned by a Colonel Selwyn and his
wife, and asked simply for “Miss Grace Selwyn”.
In three months from that day the two came down the path hand in hand
and stepped out together on life’s journey, and six months later through
the death of a cousin, Waring Park fell to them and made up for the loss
of the Fellowship.