Mary Cholmondeley

The Romance of His Life

Warsaw 2022

Contents

The Romance of his Life

The Romance of his Life

I have always believed that the exact moment when the devil entered into Barrett was four forty-five p.m. on a certain June afternoon, when he and I were standing at Parker’s door in the court at–s. He says himself that he was as pure as snow till that instant, and that if the entente cordialebetween himself and that very interesting and stimulating personality had not been established he is convinced he would either have died young of excessive virtue, or have become a missionary. I don’t know about that. I only know the consequences of the ententeaged me. But then Barrett says I was born middle-aged like Maitland himself, the hero of this romance, if so it can be called. Barrett calls it a romance. I call it–I don’t know what to call it, but it covers me with shame whenever I think of it.

Barrett says that shame is a very wholesome discipline, a great eye-opener and brain stretcher, and one he has unfortunately never had the benefit of, so he feels it a duty to act so as to make the experience probable in the near future.

On this particular afternoon we had both just bicycled back together from lunching with Parker’s aunt at Ely, and she had given me a great bunch of yellow roses for Parker and a melon, and we were to drop them at Parker’s. And here we were at Parker’s, and apparently he was out or asleep, and not to be waked by Barrett’s best cat-call. And as we stood at his door, Barrett clutching the melon, I found the roses were not in my hand. Where on earth had I put them down? At Maitland’s door, perhaps, where we had run up expecting to find him, or at Bradley’s, where we had stopped a moment. Neither of us could remember.

I was just going back for them when whom should we see coming sailing across the court in cap and gown but old Maitland in his best attitude, chin up, book in hand, signet ring showing.

Parker’s aunt used to chaff us for calling him old, and said we thought everyone of forty-five was tottering on the brink of the tomb. And so they mostly are, I think, if they are Dons. I have heard other men who have gone down say that you leave them tottering, and you come back ten years later and there they are, still tottering.

Barrett said Maitland did everything as if his portrait was being taken doing it, and that his effect on others was never absent from his mind. I don’t know about that, but certainly in his talk he was always trying to impress on us his own aspect of himself.

If it was a fine morning and he wished to be thought to be enjoying it, he would rub his hands and say there was not a happier creature on God’s earth than himself. He pined to be thought unconventional, and after drawing our attention to some microscopic delinquency, he would regret that there had been no fairy godmother at hand at his christening to endow him with a proper deference for social conventions. If he gave a small donation to any college scheme the success of which was not absolutely assured, he would shake his head and say: “I know very well that all you youngsters laugh in your sleeve at the way I lead forlorn hopes, but it is a matter of temperament. I can’t help it.”

The personal reminiscences with which his conversation was liberally strewed were ingeniously calculated to place him in a picturesque light. Parker’s aunt says that stout men are more in need of a picturesque light than thin ones. Maitland certainly was stout and short, with a thick face and no neck, and a perfectly round head, set on his shoulders like an ill-balanced orange, or William Tell’s apple. We should never have noticed what he looked like if it had not been for his illusion that he was irresistible to the opposite sex; at least, he was always adroitly letting drop things which showed, if you put two and two together, and he never made the sum very difficult–what ravages he inadvertently made in feminine bosoms, how careful he was, how careful he had learntto be not to raise expectations. He was always pathetically anxious to impress on us that he had given a good deal of pain. But whether it was really an hallucination on his part that he was hopelessly adored by women, or whether the hallucination consisted in the belief that he had succeeded in convincing his little college world of his powers of fascination, I cannot tell you. I don’t pretend to know everything like Barrett.

Parker’s aunt told Parker in confidence, who told Barrett and me in confidence, that she had once, on his own suggestion, asked Maitland to tea, but had never repeated the invitation, though he told her repeatedly that he frequently passed her door on the way to the cathedral, because he had hinted to mutual friends that a devoted friendship was, alas! all he felt able to give in that quarter, but was not what was desired by that charming lady.

And now here was Maitland advancing towards us with one of Parker’s aunt’s yellow roses in his buttonhole.

We both instantly realised what had happened. I had left the roses at his door by mistake. How gratified she would be when she heard of it!

I giggled.

“Don’t say a word about them,” hissed Barrett, her fervent admirer, as Maitland came up to us.

“Won’t you both come in to tea,” he said genially. “Parker’s out.”

We left Parker’s melon on his doorstep to chaperon itself, and turned back with him. And sure enough, on his table was the bunch of roses.

“Glorious, aren’t they?” said Maitland, waving his signet ring toward them.

I do believe he had asked us in because of them. He loved cheap effects.

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.”

“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.

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