David Ritchie - The New Warden

Nana's cottage at Stow! Thatch smelling of the November rains; a stuffy little parlour with a smoky fire. Forlorn trees outside shedding their last leaves into the ditch at the side of the lane. Her old nurse, nearly stone deaf, as her sole companion.

Gwen felt her knees trembling under her. Her eyes smarted and a great sob came into her throat. She had no home. Nobody wanted her!

A tear fell upon the envelope in her hand, and one fell upon the red carpet under her feet. She must try and not cry, crying made one ugly. She must go to her room as quickly as she could.

Then came noiselessly out from the curtained door at Gwen's right hand the figure of Dr. Middleton. He was already dressed for dinner, his face composed and dignified as usual, but preoccupied as if the business of the day was not over. There were these letters waiting for him on the table. He came on, and Gwen, blinded by a big tear in each eye, vaguely knew that he stooped and swept up the letters in his hand. Then he turned his face towards her in his slow, deliberate way and looked. She closed her eyes, and the two tears squeezed between the lids, ran down her cheeks leaving the delicate rosy skin wet and shining under the electric light.

Tears had rarely been seen by the Warden: never – in fact – until lately! He was startled by them and disconcerted.

"Has anything happened?" he asked. "Anything serious?" It would need to be something very serious for tears!

The gentleness of his voice only made the desolation in Gwen's heart the more poignant. In a week's time she would have to leave this beautiful kindly little home, this house of refuge. The fear she had had before of the Warden vanished at his sudden tenderness of tone; he seemed now something to cling to, something solid and protective that belonged to the world of ease and comfort, of good things; things to be desired above all else, and from which she was going to be cruelly banished – to Stow. She made a convulsive noise somewhere in her young throat, but was inarticulate.

There came sounds of approaching steps. The Warden hesitated but only for a moment. He moved to the door of the library.

"Come in here," he said, a little peremptorily, and he turned and opened it for Gwen.

Gwen slid within and moving blindly, knocked herself against the protruding wing of his book-shelves. That made the Warden vexed with somebody, the somebody who had made the child cry so much that she couldn't see where she was going. He closed the door behind her.

"You have bad news in that letter?" he asked. "Your mother is not ill?"

Gwen shook her head and stared upon the floor, her lips twitching.

"Anything you can talk over with Lady Dashwood?" he asked.

"No," was the stifled answer with a shake of the dark head.

"Can you tell me about it? I might be able to advise, help you?"

"No!" This time the sound was long drawn out with a shrill sob.

What was to be done?

"Try not to cry!" he said gently. "Tell me what it is all about. If you need help – perhaps I can help you!"

So much protecting sympathy given to her, after that letter, made Gwen feel the joy of utter weakness in the presence of strength, of saving support.

"Shall I read that letter?" he asked, putting out his hand.

Gwen clutched it tighter. No, no, that would be fatal! He laid his hand upon hers. Gwen began to tremble. She shook from head to foot, even her teeth chattered. She held tight on to that letter – but she leaned nearer to him.

"Then," said the Warden, without removing his hand, "tell me what is troubling you? It is something in that letter?"

Gwen moved her lips and made a great effort to speak.

"It's – it's nothing!" she said.

"Nothing!" repeated the Warden, just a little sternly.

This was too much for Gwen, the tears rose again swiftly into her eyes and began to drop down her cheeks. "It's only – " she began.

"Yes, tell me," said the Warden, coaxingly, for those tears hurt him, "tell me, child, never mind what it is."

"It's only – ," she began again, and now her teeth chattered, "only – that nobody cares what happens to me – I've got no home!"

That this pretty, inoffensive, solitary child had no home, was no news to the Warden. His sister had hinted at it on the day that Gwen was left behind by her mother. But he had dismissed the matter, as not concerning the college or the reconstruction of National Education. Since then whenever it cropped up again, he again dismissed it, because – well, because his mind was not clear. Now, suddenly, he seemed to be more certain, his thoughts clearer. Each tear that Gwen dropped seemed to drop some responsibility upon him. His face must have betrayed this – perhaps his hands also. How it happened the Warden did not quite know, but he was conscious that the girl made a movement towards him, and then he found himself holding her in his arms. She was weeping convulsively into his shirt-front – weeping out the griefs of her childhood and girlhood and staining his shirt front with responsibility for them all, soaking him with petty cares, futile recollections, mean subterfuges, silly triumphs, sordid disappointments, all the small squalid moral muddle that Belinda Scotts call "life."

All this smothered the Warden's shirt-front and trickled sideways into the softer part of that article of his dress.

For the first few moments his power of thinking failed him. He was conscious only of his hands on her waist and shoulder, of the warmth of her dark hair against his face. He could feel her heart thumping, thumping in her slender body against his.

A knock came at the door.

The Warden came to himself. He released the weeping girl gently and walked to the door.

He opened it, holding it in his hand. "What is it, Robinson?" he asked, for he had for the moment forgotten that it was dinner time, and that a guest was expected.

"Mr. Boreham is in the drawing-room, sir," said the old servant very meekly, for he met the narrow eyes fixed coldly upon him.

"Very well," said the Warden, and he closed the door again.

Then he turned round and looked at Gwendolen Scott. She was standing exactly where he had left her, standing with her hands clutching at a little pocket-handkerchief and her letter. She was waiting. Her wet eyelashes almost rested on her flushed cheeks. Her lips were slightly swollen. She was not crying, she was still and silent. She was waiting – her conceit for the moment gone – she was waiting to know from him what was going to become of her. Her whole drooping attitude was profoundly humble. The humility of it gave Middleton a strange pang of pain and pleasure.

The way in which the desire for power expresses itself in a man or woman is the supreme test of character. The weak fritter away on nothings the driving force of this priceless instinct; this instinct that has raised us from primeval slime to the mastery of the world. The weak waste it, it seems to slip through their fingers and vanish. Only the strong can bend this spiritual energy to the service of an important issue, and the strongest of all do this unconsciously, so that He, who is supreme Master of the souls of men, could say, "Why callest thou Me good?"

The Warden in his small sphere of academic life showed himself to be one of the strong sort. His mind was analytical rather than constructive, but among all the crowded teaching staff of Oxford only one other man – and he, too, now the head of a famous college – had given as much of himself to his pupils. Indeed, so much had the Warden given, that he had left little for himself. His time and his extraordinarily wide knowledge, materials that he had gathered for his own use, all were at the service of younger men who appealed to him for guidance. He grasped at opportunities for them, found gaps that they could fill, he criticised, suggested, pushed; and so the years went on, and his own books remained unwritten. Only now, when a new world seemed to him to be in the making – he sat down deliberately to give his own thoughts expression.