"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 c.o.xcomb, 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 a.s.sure 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.e.x, 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 pa.s.sed."
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 b.u.t.tonhole. 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.