For my poor head was spinning, and I had much ado to collect my wits. She would read, improve herself, be more worthy of my teaching when I came again, forsooth!—Ah! Nellie, Nellie, that I must listen with unmoved pedagogic countenance, that I must give you impersonal and sage advice, out of a broken heart!—
‘Yes, wait,’ I repeated. ‘Later your course of action may be made clearer, and you may have an opportunity of speaking without causing him annoyance or distress. You are not disobeying his orders, in any case.’
‘Thank you,’ she said again. ‘See, the lamps are lit. My father must be home and we are late. Oh! how I wish you were not going away to-morrow. He will miss you, we shall all miss you so badly.’
I did not sleep much that night.
CHAPTER XXXI.
The ancient postboy drove out to Westrea next morning, and conveyed me and my impedimenta back to Cambridge.
The journey was a silent one, I being as little disposed for conversation as he. My thoughts were not very cheerful. Yet what had I, after all, to make a poor mouth about? I had asked to know my own mind, and arrive at a definite decision concerning certain matters closely affecting my future. Now I knew it very thoroughly; and, as to those matters, had decided once and for all. It only remained for me to acquaint my kind old friend, the Master, with that decision as tactfully and delicately as might be. But how should I acquit myself? And how would he take it? And how far should I be compelled to speak of Hartover and Nellie, and of my own relation to both, to make my meaning clear? For what a tangle it all was—a tangle almost humorous, though almost tragic too, as such human tangles mostly are! Well, I supposed I must stick to my old method of blunt truth-telling, leaving the event to my Maker, who, having created that strange anomaly, the human heart, must surely know how best to deal with its manifold needs and vagaries!
So far then, it was, after all, fairly plain sailing. But, unfortunately, these thoughts were not the only thing which troubled me.
For I felt as well as thought; and feeling is more dangerous than thought because at once more intimate and more intangible. A great emptiness filled—for emptiness can fill, just as silence can shout, and that hideously—not only my own soul but, as it seemed, all Nature around me. The land was empty, the sky empty. An east-wind blight spread abroad, taking all colour out of the landscape and warmth out of the sunshine. Just so had my parting with Nellie cast a blight over me, taking the colour and warmth out of my life. For I had been with her long enough for her presence, the sound of her voice, and constant sight of her to become a habit. How terribly I missed, and should continue to miss, her—not only in great matters but in small, in all the pleasant, trivial, friendly incidents of every day!
After the freshness and spotless cleanliness of Westrea, my college rooms—fond though I was of them—looked dingy and uncared for, as is too often the way of an exclusively masculine dwelling-place. The men had not come up yet, which spared me the annoyance of Halidane’s neighbourhood for the moment. Still I felt the depressing lack of life and movement throughout the college buildings and quadrangles. Cambridge was asleep—a dull and dismal sleep, as it struck me. The Master, I found, was back and at the Lodge once more; but, since only a portion of the house was ready for habitation, Mrs. Dynevor and her daughters would remain at Bath for some weeks longer. This I was glad to hear, as it promised to simplify my rather awkward task.