Chapter 16

One day Howard laid down his pen, and looking up, having finished a chapter, saw that Maud's eyes were fixed upon him with an anxious intentness. She was sitting in a low chair near the fire, and an open book lay disregarded on her knee. He went across to her and sat down on a low chair beside her, taking her hand in his.

"What is it, dear child?" he said. "Am I very selfish and stupid to sit here without a word like this?"

Maud put her lips to his hand, and laughed a contented laugh. "Oh no, no," she said; "I like to see you hard at work--there seems no need to say anything--it's just you and me!"

"Well," said Howard, "you must just tell me what you were thinking--you had travelled a long way beyond that."

"Not out of your reach," said Maud; "I was just thinking how different men and women were, and how I liked you to be different. I was remembering how awfully mysterious you were at first--so full to the brim of strange things which I could not fathom. I always seemed to be dislodging something I had never thought of. I used to wonder how you could find time, in the middle of it all, to care about me: you were always giving me something. But now it has all grown so much simpler and more wonderful too. It's like what you said about Cambridge long ago, the dark secret doorways, the hidden gardens; I see now that all those ideas and thoughts are only things you are carrying with you, like luggage. They are not part of you at all. Don't you know how, when one is quite a child, a person's house seems to be all a mysterious part of himself? One thinks he has chosen and arranged it all, knows where everything is and what it means--everything seems to be a sort of deliberate expression of his tastes and ideas--and, then one gets older, and finds out that people don't know what is in their houses at all--there are rooms into which they never go; and then one finds that they don't even see the things in their own rooms, have forgotten how they came there, wouldn't know if they were taken away. My, I used to feel as if the scents and smells of houses were all arranged and chosen by their owners. It's like that with you; all the things you know and remember, the words you speak, are not YOU at all; I see and feel you now apart from all that."

"I am afraid I have lost what novelists call my glamour," said Howard. "You have found me out, the poor, shivering, timid thing that sits like a wizard in the middle of his properties, only hoping that the stuffed crocodile and the skeleton will frighten his visitors."

Maud laughed. "Well, I am not frightened any more," she said. "I doubt if you could frighten me if you tried. I wonder how I should feel if I saw you angry or chilly. Are you ever angry, I wonder?"

"I think some of my pupils would say that I could be very disagreeable," said Howard. "I don't think that I was ever very fierce, but I have realised that I was on occasions very unpleasant."

"Well, I'll wait and see," said Maud; "but what I was going to say was that you seem to me different--hardly the person I married. I used to wonder a little at first how I had had the impudence . . . and then I used to think that perhaps some day you would wake up, and find you had come to the bottom of the well, but you never seemed disappointed."

"Disappointed!" said Howard; "what terrible rubbish! Why Maud, don't you KNOW what you have done for me? You have put the whole thing straight. It's just that. I was full of vanities and thoughts and bits of knowledge, and I really think I thought them important--they ARE important too, like food and drink--one must have them--at least men must--but they don't matter; at least it doesn't matter what they are. Men have always to be making and doing things--business, money, positions, duties; but the point is to know that they are unimportant, and yet to go on doing them as if they mattered--one must do that--seriously and not solemnly; but you have somehow put all that in the right place; and I know now what matters and what does not. There, do you call that nothing?"

"Perhaps we have found it out together," said Maud; "the only difference is that you have the courage to tell me that you were wrong, while I have never even dared to tell you what a hollow sham I am, and what a mean and peevish child I was before you came on the scene."

"Well, we won't look into your dark past," said Howard. "I am quite content with what they call the net result!" and then they sate together in silence, and had no further need of words.

XXX

CAMBRIDGE AGAIN

Howard was summoned to Cambridge in June for a College meeting. He was very glad to see Cambridge and the familiar faces; but he had not been parted from Maud for a day since their marriage, and he was rather amazed to find, not that he missed her, but how continuously he missed her from moment to moment; the fact that he could not compare notes with her about every incident seemed to rob the incidents of their savour, and to produce a curious hampering of his thoughts. A change, too, seemed to have passed over the College; his rooms were just as he had left them, but everything seemed to have narrowed and contracted. He saw a great many of the undergraduates, and indeed was delighted to find how they came in to see him.

Guthrie was one of the first to arrive, and Howard was glad to meet him alone. Howard was sorry to see that the cheerful youth had evidently been feeling acutely what had happened; he had not lost his spirits, but he had a rather worn aspect. He inquired about the Windlow party, and they talked of indifferent things; but when Guthrie rose to go, he said, speaking with great diffidence, "I wanted to say one thing to you, and now I do not know how to express it; it is that I don't want you to think I feel in any way aggrieved--that would be simply absurd--but more than that, I want to say that I think you behaved quite splendidly at Windlow--really splendidly! I hope you don't think it is impertinent for me to say that, but I want you to know how grateful I am to you--Jack told me what had happened--and I thought that if I said nothing, you might feel uncomfortable. Please don't feel anything of the kind--I only wish with all my heart that I could think I could behave as you did if I had been in your place, and I want to be friends."

"Yes indeed," said Howard, "I think it is awfully good of you to speak about it. You won't expect me," he added, smiling, "to say that I wish it had turned out otherwise; but I do hope you will be happy, with all my heart; and you will know that you will have a real welcome at Windlow if ever you care to come there."

The young man shook hands in silence with Howard, and went out with a smile. "Oh, I shall be all right," he said.

Jack sate up late with Howard and treated him to a long grumble.

"I do hope to goodness you will come back to Cambridge," he said. "You must simply make Maud come. You must use your influence, your beautiful influence, of which we hear so much. Seriously, I do miss you here very much, and so does everybody else. Your pupils are in an awful stew. They say that you got them through the Trip without boring them, and that Crofts bores them and won't get them through. This place rather gets on my nerves now. The Dons don't confide in me, and I don't see things from their angle, as my father says. I think you somehow managed to keep them reasonable; they are narrow-minded men, I think."

"This is rather a shower of compliments," said Howard. "But I think I very likely shall come back. I don't think Maud would mind."

"Mind!" said Jack, "why you wind that girl round your little finger. She writes about you as if you were an archangel; and look here, I am sorry I took a gloomy view. It's all right; you were the right person. Freddy Guthrie would never have done for Maud--he's in a great way about it still, but I tell him he may be thankful to have escaped. Maud is a mountain-top kind of girl; she could never have got on without a lot of aspirations, she couldn't have settled down to the country-house kind of life. You are a sort of privilege, you know, and all that; Freddy Guthrie would never have been a privilege."

"That's rather a horror!" said Howard; "you mustn't let these things out; you make me nervous!"

Jack laughed. "If your brother-in-law mayn't say this to you, I don't know who may. But seriously, really quite seriously, you are a bigger person than I thought. I'll tell you why. I had a kind of feeling that you ought not to let me speak to you as you do, that you ought to have snapped my head off. And then you seemed too much upset by what I said. I don't know if it was your tact; but you had your own way all the time, with me and with everybody; you seemed to give way at every point, and yet you carried out your programme. I thought you hadn't much backbone--there, the cat's out; and now I find that we were all dancing to your music. I like people to do that, and it amuses me to find that I danced as obediently as anyone, when I really thought I could make you do as I wished. I admire your way of going on: you make everyone think that you value their opinion, and yet you know exactly what you want and get it."

Howard laughed. "I really am not such a diplomatist as that, Jack! I am not a humbug; but I will tell you frankly what happens. What people say and think, and even how they look, does affect me very much at the time; but I have a theory that most people get what they really want. One has to be very careful what one wants in this world, not because one is disappointed, but because Providence hands it one with a smile; and then it often turns out to be an ironical gift--a punishment in disguise."

"Maud shall hear that," said Jack; "a punishment in disguise--that will do her good, and take her down a peg or two. So you have found it out already?"

"My dear Jack," said Howard, "if you say anything of the kind, you will repent it. I am not going to have Maud bothered just now with any nonsense. Do you hear that? The frankness of your family is one of its greatest charms--but you don't quite know how much the frankness of babes and sucklings can hurt--and you are not to experiment on Maud."

Jack looked at Howard with a smile. "Here's the real man at last--the tyrant's vein! Of course, I obey. I didn't really mean it; and I like to hear you speak like that; it's rather fine."

Presently Jack said, "Now, about the Governor--rather a douche, I expect? But I see you can take care of yourself; he's hugely delighted--the intellectual temperature rises in every letter I get from him. But I want to make sure of one thing. I'm not going to stay on here much longer. I don't want a degree--it isn't the slightest use, plain or coloured. I want to get to work. If you come up again next term, I can stand it, not otherwise."

"Very well," said Howard, "that's a bargain. I must just talk things over with Maud. If we come up to Cambridge in October, you will stay till next June. If we don't, you shall be planted in the business. They will take you in, I believe, at any time, but would prefer you to finish your time here."

"Yes, that's it," said Jack, "but I want work: this is all right, in a way, but it's mostly piffle. How all these Johnnies can dangle on, I don't know; it's not my idea of life."

"Well, there's no hurry," said Howard, "but it shall be arranged as you wish."

XXXI

MAKING THE BEST OF IT

Howard became aware that with his colleagues he had suddenly become rather a person of importance. His "place" in the country was held in some dim way to increase the grandeur of the College. He found himself deferred to and congratulated. Mr. Redmayne was both caustic and affectionate.

"You look very well, I must say," he said. "You have a touch of the landed personage about you which becomes you. I should like you to come back here for our sakes, but I shan't press it. And how is Madam? I hope you have got rid of your first illusions? No? Well you must make haste and be reasonable. I am not learned in the vagaries of feminine temperament, but I imagine that the fair sex like to be dominated, and you will do that. You have a light hand on the reins--I always said that you rode the boys on the snaffle, but the curb is there! and in matrimony--well, well, I am an old bachelor of course, and I have a suspicion of all nooses. Never mind my nonsense, Kennedy--what I like about you, if I may say so, is that you have authority without pretensions. People will do as you wish, just to please you; now I have always to be cracking the whip. These fellows here are very worthy men, but they are not men of the world! They are honest and sober--indeed one can hardly get one of them to join one in a glass of port--but they are limited, very limited. Now if only you could have kept clear of matrimony--no disrespect to Madam--what a comfortable time we might have had here! Man appoints and God disappoints--I suppose it is all for the best."

"Well," said Howard, "I think you will me see back here in October--my wife is quite ready to come, and there isn't really much for me to do at Windlow. I believe I am to be on the bench shortly; but if I live there in the vacations, that will be enough; and I don't feel that I have finished with Beaufort yet."

"Excellent!" said Mr. Redmayne. "I commend Madam's good sense and discretion. Pray give her my regards, and say that we shall welcome her at Cambridge. We will make the best of it--and I confess that in your place--well, if all women were like Madam, I could view marriage with comparative equanimity--though of course, I make the statement without prejudice."

XXXII

HOWARD'S PROFESSION

When Howard came back from Cambridge he had a long talk with Maud over the future; it seemed almost tacitly agreed that he should return to his work there, at all events for a time.

"I feel very selfish and pompous about all this," said Howard; "MY work, MY sphere--what nonsense it all is! Why should I come down to Windlow, take possession, and having picked the sweetest flower in the garden, stick it in my buttonhole and march away?"

Maud laughed and said, "Oh, no, it isn't that--it is quite a simple matter. You have learnt a trade, a difficult trade; why should you give it up? We don't happen to need the money, but that doesn't matter. My business is to take off your shoulders, if I can, all the trouble entailed on you by marrying me--it's simply a division of labour. You can't just settle down in the country as a small squire, with nothing much to do. People must do the work they can do, and I should be miserable if I thought I had pulled you out of your place in the world."

"I don't know," said Howard; "there seems to me to be something rather stuffy about it: why can't we just live? Women do; there is no fuss made about their work, and their need to express themselves; yet they do it even more than men, and they do it without priggishness. My work at Cambridge is just what everyone else is doing, and if I don't do it, there will be half a dozen men capable of doing it and glad to do it. The great men of the world don't talk about the importance of their work: they just do whatever comes to hand--it's only the second-rate men who say that their talents haven't full scope. Do you remember poor Chambers, who was at lunch the other day? He told me that he had migrated from a town parish to a country parish, and that he missed the organisation so much. 'There seems nothing to organise down in the country!' he said. 'Now in my town parish there was the whole machine to keep going--I enjoyed that, and I don't feel I am giving effect to the best part of myself.' That seemed to me such a pompous line, and I felt that I didn't want to be like that. One's work! how little it matters! No one is indispensable--the disappearance of one man just gives another his chance."

"Yes, of course, it is rather hard to draw the line," said Maud, "and I think it is a pity to be solemn about it; but it seems to me so simple in this case. You can do the work--they want you back--there is no reason why you should not go back."

"Perhaps it is mere laziness," said Howard, "but I feel as if I wanted a different sort of life now, a quieter life; and yet I know that there is a snare about that. I rather mistrust the people who say they must get time to think out things. It's like the old definition of metaphysics--the science of muddling oneself systematically. I don't think one can act by reason; one must act by instinct, and reason just prevents one's making a fool of oneself."

"I believe the time for the other life will come quite naturally later," said Maud. "At your age, you have got to do things. Of course it's the same with women in a way, but marriage is their obvious career, and the pity is that there don't seem enough husbands to go round. I can sit in my corner and placidly survey the overstocked market now!"

Howard got up and leaned against the chimneypiece, surveying his wife with delight. "Ah, child," he said, "I was lucky to come in when I did. I shiver at the thought that if I had arrived a little later there would have been 'no talk of thee and me' as Omar says. You would have been a devoted wife, and I should have been a hopeless bachelor!"

"It's unthinkable," said Maud, "it's horrible even to speculate about such things--a mere question of proximity! Well, it can't be mended now; and the result is that I not only drive you back to work, but you have to carry me back as well, like Sindbad and the old man of the sea."

"Yes, it's just like that!" said Howard.

He made several attempts, with Mr. Sandys and with his aunt--even with Miss Merry--to get encouragement for his plan; but he could obtain no sympathy.

"I'm sick of the very word 'ideal,'" he said to Maud. "I feel like a waiter handing about tumblers on a tray, pressing people to have ideals--at least that is what I seem to be supposed to be doing. I haven't any ideals myself--the only thing I demand and practise is civility."

"Yes, I don't think you need bother about ideals," said Maud, "it's wonderful the depressing power of words; there are such a lot of fine and obvious things in the world, perfectly distinct, absolutely necessary, and yet the moment they become professional, they deprive one of all spirit and hope--Jane has that effect on me, I am afraid. I am sure she is a fine creature, but her view always makes me feel uncomfortable--now Cousin Anne takes all the things one needs for granted, and isn't above making fun of them; and then they suddenly appear wholesome and sensible. She is quite clear on the point; now if SHE wanted you to stay, it would be different."

"Very well, so be it!" said Howard; "I feel I am caught in feminine toils. I am like a child being taught to walk--every step applauded, handed on from embrace to embrace. I yield! I will take my beautiful mind back to Cambridge, I will go on moulding character, I will go on suggesting high motives. But the responsibility is yours, and if you turn me into a prig, it will not be my fault."

"Ah, I will take the responsibility for that," said Maud, "and, by the way, hadn't we better begin to look out for a house? I can't live in College, I believe, not even if I were to become a bedmaker?"

"Yes," said Howard, "a high-minded house of roughcast and tile, with plenty of white paint inside, Chippendale chairs, Watts engravings. I have come to that--it's inevitable, it just expresses the situation; but I mustn't go on like this--it isn't funny, this academic irony--it's dreadfully professional. I will be sensible, and write to an agent for a list. It had better just be 'a house' with nothing distinctive; because this will be our home, I hope, and that the official residence. And now, Maud, I won't be tiresome any more; we can't waste time in talking about these things. I haven't done with making love to you yet, and I doubt if I ever shall!"

XXXIII

ANXIETY

The months moved slowly on, a time full of deepening strain and anxiety to Howard. Maud herself seemed serene enough at first, full of hope; she began to be more dependent on him; and Howard perceived two things which gave him some solace; in the first place he found that, sharp as the tension of anxiety in his mind often was, he did not realise it as a burden of which he would be merely glad to be rid. He had an instinctive dislike of all painful straining things--of responsibilities, disagreeable duties, things that disturbed his tranquillity; but this anxiety did not come to him in that light at all; he longed that it should be over, but it was not a thing which he desired to banish from his mind; it was all bound up with love and happy anticipation; and next he learned the joy of doing things that would otherwise be troublesome for the sake of love, and found them all transmuted, not into seemly courtesies, but into sharp and urgent pleasures. To be of use to Maud, to entertain her, to disguise his anxieties, to compel himself to talk easily and lightly--all this filled his soul with delight, especially when he found as the months went on that Maud began to look to him as a matter of course; and though Howard had been used to say that being read aloud to was the only occupation in the world that was worse than reading aloud, he found that there was no greater pleasure than in reading to Maud day by day, in finding books that she cared for.

"If only I could spare you some of this," he said to her one day, "that's the awful thing, not to be able to share the pain of anyone whom one loves. I feel I could hold my hand in the fire with a smile, if only I knew that it was saving you something!"

"Ah, dearest, I know," said Maud, "but you mustn't think of it like that; it INTERESTS me in a curious way--I can't explain--I don't feel helpless; I feel as if I were doing something worth the trouble!"

At last the time drew near; it was hot, silent, airless weather; the sun lay fiercely in the little valley, day by day; one morning they were sitting together and Maud suddenly said to him, "Dearest, one thing I want to say; if I seem to be afraid, I am NOT afraid: will you remember that? I want to walk every step of the way; I mean to do it, I wish to do it; I am not afraid in my heart of hearts of anything--pain, or even worse; and you must remember that, even if I do not seem to remember!"

"Yes," said Howard, "I will remember that; and indeed I know it; you even take away my own fears when you speak so; love takes hands beneath it all."

But on the following morning--Maud had a restless and suffering night--Mrs. Graves came in upon Howard as he tried to read, to tell him that there was great anxiety, Maud had had a sudden attack of pain; it had passed off, but they were not reassured. "The doctor will be here presently," she said. Howard rose dry-lipped and haggard. "She sends you her dearest love," she said, "but she would rather be alone; she doesn't wish you to see her thus; she is absolutely brave, and that is the best thing; and I am not afraid myself," she added: "we must just wait--everything is in her favour; but I know how you feel and how you must feel; just clasp the anxiety close, look in its face; it's a blessed thing, though you can't see it as I do--blessed, I mean, that one CAN feel so."