We both looked at them in silence.
"The odd thing is that they were left here without a line or a card or
anything while I was out."
"Then you don't know who sent them," said Barrett, casting a warning
glance at me.
"Well, yes and no. I don't actually know for certain, but I think I can
guess. I fancy I know my own faults as well as most men, and I flatter
myself I am not a coxcomb, but still--"
I giggled again. I should be disappointed in Parker, who was on very
easy terms with his aunt if he did not score off her before she was much
older.
"You are not, I hope, expecting me or even poor Jones (Jones is me) to
be so credulous as to believe a man sent them," said Barrett severely.
When Maitland was in what Barrett called his "conquering hero mood" he
did not resent these impertinences, at least not from Barrett. "If you
are, I must remind you that there are limits as to what even little
things like us can swallow."
"Barrett, you are incorrigible. _Cherchez la femme_," said Maitland with
evident gratification, counting spoonfuls of tea into the teapot. He
often said he liked keeping in touch with the young life of the
University. "One, two, three, and one for the pot. Just so! I don't set
up to be a lady-killer, but--"
"Oh! oh!" from Barrett.
"I'm a confirmed old bachelor, a grumpy, surly recluse wedded to my
pipe, but for all that I have eyes in my head. I know a pretty woman
from a plain one, I hope, even though I don't personally want to
"domesticate the recording angel."[2]
[2] I thought the recording angel funny at the time until Barrett
told me afterwards that it was cribbed from Rhoda Broughton.
"She'll land you yet unless you look out," said Barrett with decision.
"I foresee that I shall be supporting your faltering footsteps to the
altar in a month's time. She'll want a month to get her clothes. Is the
day fixed yet?"
"What nonsense you talk. I never met such a sentimentalist as you,
Barrett. I assure you I don't even know her name. But it has not been
possible for me to help observing that a lady, a very exquisite young
lady, has done me the honour to attend all my lectures, and to listen
with the most rapt attention to my poor words. And last time, only
yesterday, I noted the fact, ahem! that she wore a rose, a yellow rose,
presumably plucked from the same tree as these."
There were, I suppose, in our near vicinity, about a hundred and fifty
yellow rose trees in bloom at that moment. Barrett must have known that.
Nevertheless, he nodded his head and said gravely:
"That proves it."
On looking over these pages he affirms that this and not earlier was the
precise moment when the devil entered into him, supplying, as he says, a
long felt though unrealised want.
"I seldom look at my audience when I am lecturing," continued Maitland.
"I am too much engrossed with my subject. But I could not help noticing
her absorbed attention, so different from that of most women. Why they
come to lectures I don't know."
"I think I have seen the person you mean," said Barrett, in a perfectly
level voice. "I don't know who she is, but I saw her waiting under an
archway after chapel last Sunday evening. I noticed her because of her
extreme good looks. She was evidently watching for someone. When the
congregation had all passed out she turned away."
"I should have liked to thank her," said Maitland regretfully. "It
seems so churlish, so boorish, not to say a word. You have no idea who
she was?"
"None," said Barrett.
Shortly afterwards we took our leave, but not until Maitland had been
reminded by the lady's appearance of a certain charming woman of whom he
had seen a good deal at one time in years gone by, who, womanlike, had
been unable to understand the claims which the intellectual life make on
a man, and who had, in consequence, believed him cold and quarrelled
with him to his great regret, because it was impossible for him to dance
attendance on her as she expected, and as he would gladly have done had
he been a man of leisure. Having warned us young tyros against the
danger of frankness in all dealings with women, and how often it had got
him into hot water with the sex, he bade us good evening.
As we came out we saw across the court that the melon had been taken in,
so judged that Parker had returned. He had. We were so tickled by the
way Maitland had accounted for the roses that we quite forgot to score
off Parker about them, and actually told him what Maitland supposed.
Barrett then suggested that we should at once form a committee to
deliberate on the situation. Parker and I did not quite see why a
committee was necessary to laugh at old Maitland, but we agreed.
"Did you really see the woman he means, or were you only pulling
Maitland's leg?" I asked.
"I saw her all right," retorted Barrett. "Don't you remember, Parker,
how I nudged you when she passed."
Parker nodded.
"She was such a picture that I asked who she was, and found she was a
high school mistress, the niece of old Cooper, the vet. She is going to
be married to a schoolmaster, and go out to Canada with him. I don't
mind owning I was rather smitten myself, or I should not have taken the
trouble."
"She has left Cambridge," said Parker slowly. "When I got out of the
train half-an-hour ago she was getting in. Cooper was seeing her off."
"Oh, don't--don't tell poor old Maitland," I broke in. "Let him go on
holding out his chest and thinking she sent him the roses. It won't
matter to her, if she is off to Canada, and never coming back any more.
And it will do him such a lot of good."
"I don't mean to tell him--immediately," said Barrett ominously. "I
think with you he ought to have his romance. Now I know she is safely
gone forever, though I don't mind owning it gives me a twinge to think
she is throwing herself away on a schoolmaster: but as she really can't
come back and raise a dust, gentlemen, I lay a proposal before the
committee, that the lady who sent the roses should follow them up with
a little note."
The committee agreed unanimously, and we decided, at least Barrett
decided, that he should compose the letter, and Parker, who was rather
good at a feigned handwriting, should copy it out.
Parker and I wanted Barrett to make the letter rather warm, and saying
something complimentary about Maitland's appearance, but Barrett would
not hear of it. I did not see where the fun came in if it was just an
ordinary note, but Barrett was adamant. He said he had an eye on the
future.
He put his head in his hands, and thought a lot and then scribbled no
end, and then tore it up, and finally produced the stupidest little
commonplace letter you ever saw with simply nothing in it, saying how
much she had profited by his lectures and rot of that kind. I was
dreadfully disappointed, for I had always thought Barrett as clever as
he could stick. He said it was an awful grind for him to be commonplace
even for a moment, and that by rights I ought to have composed the
letter, but that it was no more use expecting anything subtle from me
than a Limerick from an archbishop.
He proceeded to read it aloud.
"But how is he to know it is the person who sent him the roses?" said
Parker, "and how is he to answer if she does not give him an address?
Hang it all. He ought to be able to answer. Give the poor devil a
chance."
"He shall be given every chance," said Barrett. "But don't you two prize
idiots see that we can't give a real name and address because he would
certainly go there?"
"Not a bit of it. He's as lazy as a pig. He never goes anywhere. He says
he hasn't time. He's been seccotined into his armchair for the last ten
years."
"I tell you he would go on all fours from here to Ely if he thought
there was the chance of a woman looking at him when he got there."
"Then how is he to answer?" said Parker, who always had to have
everything explained to him.
"I am just coming to that. I don't say anything in the note about the
roses, you observe. I am far too maidenly. But I just add one tiny
postscript:
'If you do not regard this little note as an unwarrantable
intrusion, please wear one of my roses on Sunday morning at chapel,
even if it is faded, as a sign that you have forgiven my presumption
in writing these few lines.'"
"That's not bad," said Parker suddenly.
"Now," said Barrett, tossing the sheet over to him, "you copy that out
in a fist that you can stick to, because it will be the first of a long
correspondence."
"We've not settled her name yet," I suggested.
"Maud," said Barrett with decision. "What else could it be?"
The letter was written on an unstamped sheet of paper, was carefully
directed--not quite correctly. Barrett insisted on that, and posted it
himself.
The following Sunday we were all in our places early, and sure enough,
Maitland, who came in more like a conquering hero than ever, was wearing
a faded yellow rose in his buttonhole. He touched it in an absent manner
once or twice during the service, and sat with his profile sedulously
turned toward the congregation. He was not quite so bad profile because
it did not show the bulging of his cheeks. As he came out he looked
about him furtively, almost shyly. He evidently feared she was not
there. Barrett and I joined him, and engaged him in conversation (though
we had some difficulty in dragging him from the chapel), in the course
of which he mentioned that he had intended to go to his sister at
Newmarket for Sunday, but a press of work had obliged him to give up his
visit at the last moment.
Poor Maitland! When he left us that morning, and Barrett and I looked at
each other, I felt a qualm of pity for him. I knew how ruthless Barrett
was, and that he was doomed.
But if I realised Barrett's ruthlessness, I had not realised his
cunning. His next move was masterly, though I did not think so at the
time. He was as cautious and calculating as if his life depended on it.
He got some note-paper with a little silver M. on a blue lozenge on it
and wrote another note. He was going to Farnham for a few days to stay
with his eldest brother, who was quartered there. And in this note
Maud--Maitland's Maud as we now called her--diffidently ventured to ask
for elucidation on one or two points of the lectures which had proved
too abstruse for her feminine intellect. She showed considerable
intelligence for a woman, and real knowledge of the lectures--I did that
part--and suggested that as her letters, if addressed to her, were apt
to go to her maiden aunt of the same name with whom she was staying, and
who was a very old-fashioned person, totally opposed to the higher
education of women--that if he was so good as to find time to answer her
questions it would be best to direct to her at the Post Office, Farnham,
under her initials M.M., where she could easily send for them.
I betted a pound to a penny that Maitland would not rise to this bait,
and Barrett took it. I told him you could see the hook through the worm.
Parker was uneasy, even when Barrett had explained to him that it was
impossible for us to get into trouble in the matter.
"You always say that," said Parker, with harrowing experiences in the
back-ground of his mind.
"Well, I say it again. I know your powers of obtruding yourself on the
notice of the authorities, but how do even you propose to wedge yourself
into a scrape on this occasion? With all your gifts in that line you
simply can't do it."
Parker ruminated.
"Ought we to--"
"Ought we to what?"
"To pull his leg to such an extent? Isn't it taking rather a--rather
a--er responsibility?"
"Responsibility sits as lightly on me as dew upon the rose," said
Barrett. "You copy out that."
Parker copied it out and Barrett went off to Farnham. A few days later
he re-appeared. I was smoking in Parker's room when he came in.
He sat down under the lamp, drew a fat letter from his waistcoat pocket,
and read it aloud to us. It was Maitland's answer.
It really was a ghastly letter, the kind of literary preachy rot which
you read in a book, which I never thought people really wrote, not even
people like Maitland, who seem to live in a world of shams. It was
improving and patronising and treacly, and full of information, partly
about the lectures, but mostly about himself. He came out in a very
majestic light you may be sure of that. And at the end he begged her not
to hesitate to write to him again if he could be of the least use to
her, that busy as he undoubtedly was, his college work never seemed in
his eyes as important as real human needs.
"He's cribbed that out of a book," interrupted Parker. "Newby the tutor
in 'Belchamber,' who is a most awful prig, says those very words."
"Prigs all say the same things," said Barrett airily. "If Maitland read
'Belchamber,' he would think Newby was a caricature of him. He'd _never_
believe that he was plagiarising Newby. The cream of the letter is still
to come," and he went on reading.
Maitland patted the higher education of women on the head, and half
hinted at a meeting, and then withdrew it again, saying that some of the
difficulties in her mind, which he recognised to be one of a high order,
might be more easily eliminated verbally, and that he should be at
Farnham during the vacation, but that he feared his stay would be brief,
and his time was hopelessly bespoken beforehand, etc., etc.
"He might be an Adonis," said Parker. "He'll be coy and virginal next."
"He'll be a lot of things before long," said Barrett grimly. "Get out
your inkpot, Parker. I'm going to have another shy at him."
"You're _not_ going to suggest a meeting! For goodness sake, Barrett, be
careful. You will be saying Jones must dress up as a woman next."
"Well, if he does, I won't," I said. "I simply won't."