Gaudy Night (34 page)

Mr. Pomfret had been assiduously polite. He and Mr. Rogers had taken her on the river, and had included Miss Cattermole in the party. They had all been on their best behaviour, and a pleasant time had been enjoyed by all, the mention of previous encounters having, by common consent, been avoided. Harriet was pleased with Miss Cattermole; she seemed to have made an effort to throw off the blight that had settled upon her, and Miss Hillyard’s report had been encouraging. Mr. Pomfret had also asked Harriet to lunch and to play tennis; on the former occasion she had truthfully pleaded a previous engagement and, on the second, had said, with rather less truth, that she had not played for years, was out of form and was not really keen. After all, one had one’s work to do (
Le Fanu, ’Twixt Wind and Water,
and the
History of Prosody
among them made up a fairly full programme), and one could not spend all one’s time idling with undergraduates.

On the evening after her formal introduction to Miss Newland, however, Harriet encountered Mr. Pomfret accidentally. She had been to see an old Shrewsburian who was attached to the Somerville Senior Common Room, and was crossing St. Giles on her way back, shortly before midnight, when she was aware of a group of young men in evening dress, standing about one of the trees which adorn that famous thoroughfare. Being naturally inquisitive, Harriet went to see what was up. The street was practically deserted, except for through traffic of the ordinary kind. The upper branches of the tree were violently agitated, and Harriet, standing on the outskirts of the little group beneath, learned from their remarks that Mr. Somebody-or-the-other had undertaken, in consequence of an after-dinner bet, to climb every tree in St. Giles without interference from the Proctor.

As the number of trees was large and the place public, Harriet felt the wager to be rather optimistic. She was just turning away to cross the street in the direction of the Lamb and Flag when another youth, who had evidently been occupying an observation-post, arrived, breathless, to announce that the Proggins was just coming into view round the corner of Broad Street. The climber came down rather hastily, and the group promptly scattered in all directions—some running past her, some making their way down side-streets, and a few bold spirits fleeing towards the small enclosure known as the Fender, within which (since it belongs not to the Town but to St. John’s) they could play at tig with the Proctor to their hearts’ content. One of the young gentlemen darting in this general direction passed Harriet close, stopped with an exclamation, and brought up beside her.

“Why, it’s you!” cried Mr. Pomfret, in an excited tone.

“Me again,” said Harriet. “Are you always out without your gown at this time of night?”

“Practically always,” said Mr. Pomfret, falling into step beside her. “Funny you should always catch me at it. Amazing luck, isn’t it?... I say, you’ve been avoiding me this term. Why?”

“Oh, no,” said Harriet; “only I’ve been rather busy.”

“But you
have
been avoiding me,” said Mr. Pomfret. “I know you have. I suppose it’s ridiculous to expect you to take any particular interest in me. I don’t suppose you ever think about me. You probably despise me.”

“Don’t be so absurd, Mr. Pomfret. Of course I don’t do anything of the sort. I like you very much, but—”

“Do you?... Then why won’t you let me see you? Look here, I
must
see you. There’s something I’ve got to tell you. When can I come and talk to you?”

“What about?” said Harriet, seized with a sudden and awful qualm.

“What
about?
Hang it, don’t be so unkind. Look here, Harriet—No, stop, you’ve got to listen. Darling, wonderful Harriet—”

“Mr. Pomfret, please—”

But Mr. Pomfret was not to be checked. His admiration had run away with him, and Harriet, cornered in the shadow of the big horse-chestnut by the Lamb and Flag, found herself listening to as eager an avowal of devotion as any young gentleman in his twenties ever lavished upon a lady considerably his senior in age and experience.

“I’m frightfully sorry, Mr. Pomfret. I never thought—No, really, it’s quite impossible. I’m at least ten years older than you are. And besides—”

“What does that matter?” With a large and clumsy gesture Mr. Pomfret swept away the difference of age and plunged on in a flood of eloquence, which Harriet, exasperated with herself and him, could not stop. He loved her, he adored her, he was intensely miserable, he could neither work nor play games for thinking of her, if she refused him he didn’t know what he should do with himself, she must have seen, she must have realised—he wanted to stand between her and all the world—

Mr. Pomfret was six feet three and broad and strong in proportion.

“Please don’t do that,” said Harriet, feeling as though she were feebly saying ‘Drop it, Caesar,’ to somebody else’s large and disobedient Alsatian. “No, I mean it. I can’t let you—” And then in a different tone:

“Look out, juggins! Here’s the Proctor.”

Mr. Pomfret, in some consternation, gathered himself together and turned as to flee. But the Proctor’s bull-dogs, who had been having a lively time with the tree-climbers in St. Giles, and were now out for blood, had come through the archway at a smart trot, and seeing a young gentleman not only engaged in nocturnal vagation without his gown but actually embracing a female (
mulier vel meretrix, enius consortio Christianis prorsus interdictum est
) leant gleefully upon him, as upon a lawful prey.

“Oh, blast!” said Mr. Pomfret. “Here, you—”

“The Proctor would like to speak to you, sir,” said the Bull-dog, grimly.

Harriet debated with herself whether it might not be more tactful to depart, leaving Mr. Pomfret to his fate. But the Proctor was close on the heels of his men; he was standing within a few yards of her and already demanding to know the offender’s name and college. There seemed to be nothing for it but to face the matter out.

“Just a moment, Mr. Proctor,” began Harriet, struggling, for Mr. Pomfret’s sake, to control a rebellious uprush of laughter. “This gentleman is with me and you can’t—Oh! good evening, Mr. Jenkyn.”

It was, indeed, that amiable pro-Proctor. He gazed at Harriet, and was struck dumb with embarrassment.

“I say,” broke in Mr. Pomfret, awkwardly, but with a gentlemanly feeling that some explanation was due from him; “it was entirely my fault. I mean, I’m afraid I was annoying Miss Vane. She—I—”

“You can’t very well prog him, you know,” said Harriet, persuasively, “can you now?”

“Come to think of it,” replied Mr. Jenkyn, “I suppose I can’t. You’re a Senior Member, aren’t you?” He waved his bull-dogs to a distance. “I beg your pardon,” he added, a little stiffly.

“Not at all,” said Harriet. “It’s a nice night. Did you have good hunting in St. Giles?”

“Two culprits will appear before their dean tomorrow,” said the pro-Proctor, rather more cheerfully. “I suppose nobody came through here?”

“Nobody but ourselves,” said Harriet; “and I can assure you that we haven’t been climbing trees.”

A wicked facility in quotation tempted her to add “except in the Hesperides”; but she respected Mr. Pomfret’s feelings and restrained herself.

“No, no,” said Mr. Jenkyn. He fingered his bands nervously and hitched his gown with its velvet facings protectively about his shoulders. “I had better be away in pursuit of those that have.”

“Good-night,” said Harriet.

“Good-night,” said Mr. Jenkyn, courteously raising his square cap. He turned sharply upon Mr. Pomfret. “Goodnight, sir.”

He stalked away with brisk steps between the posts into Museum Road, his long liripipe sleeves agitated and fluttering. Between Harriet and Mr. Pomfret there occurred one of those silences into which the first word spoken falls like the stroke of a gong. It seemed equally impossible to comment on the interruption or to resume the interrupted conversation. By common consent, however, they turned their backs upon the pro-Proctor and moved out once more into St. Giles. They had turned left and were passing through the now-deserted Fender before Mr. Pomfret found his tongue.

“A nice fool I look,” said Mr. Pomfret, bitterly.

“It was very unfortunate,” said Harriet, “but I must have looked much the more foolish. I very nearly ran away altogether. However, all’s well that ends well. He’s a very decent sort and I don’t suppose he’ll think twice about it.”

She remembered, with another disconcerting interior gurgle of mirth, an expression in use among the irreverent: “to catch a Senior girling.” “To boy” was presumably the feminine equivalent of the verb “to girl”; she wondered whether Mr. Jenkyn would employ it in Common Room next day. She did not grudge him his entertainment; being old enough to know that even the most crashing social bricks make but a small ripple in the ocean of time, which quickly dies away. To Mr. Pomfret, however, the ripple must inevitably appear of the dimensions of a maelstrom. He was muttering sulkily something about a laughing-stock.

“Please,” said Harriet, “don’t worry about it. It’s of no importance. I don’t mind one bit.”

“Of course not,” said Mr. Pomfret. “Naturally, you can’t take me seriously. You’re treating me like a child.”

“Indeed I’m not. I’m very grateful—I’m very much honoured by everything you said to me. But really and truly, it’s quite impossible.”

“Oh, well, never mind,” said Mr. Pomfret, angrily.

It was too bad, thought Harriet. To have one’s young affections trampled upon was galling enough; to have been made an object of official ridicule as well was almost unbearable. She must do something to restore the young gentleman’s self-respect.

“Listen, Mr. Pomfret. I don’t think I shall ever marry anybody. Please believe that my objection isn’t personal at all. We have been very good friends. Can’t we—?”

Mr. Pomfret greeted this fine old bromide with a dreary snort.

“I suppose,” he said, in a savage tone, “there’s somebody else.”

“I don’t know that you’ve any right to ask that.”

“Of course not,” said Mr. Pomfret, affronted. “I’ve no right to ask you anything. I ought to apologise for asking you to marry me. And for making a scene in front of the Proggins—in fact, for existing. I’m exceedingly sorry.”

Very clearly, the only balm that could in the least soothe the wounded vanity of Mr. Pomfret would be the assurance that there
was
somebody else. But Harriet was not prepared to make any such admission; and besides, whether there was anybody else or not, nothing could make the notion of marrying Mr. Pomfret anything but preposterous. She begged him to take a reasonable view of the matter; but he continued to sulk; and indeed, nothing that could possibly be said could mitigate the essential absurdity of the situation. To offer a lady one’s chivalrous protection against the world in general, and to be compelled instead to accept her senior standing as a protection for one’s self against the just indignation of the Proctor is, and remains, farcical.

Their ways lay together. In resentful silence they paced the stones, past the ugly front of Balliol and the high iron gates of Trinity, past the fourteen-fold sneer of the Caesars and the top-heavy arch of the Clarendon Building, till they stood at the Junction of Cat Street and Holywell.

“Well,” said Mr. Pomfret, “if you don’t mind, I’d better cut along here. It’s just going twelve.”

“Yes. Don’t bother about me. Good-night.... And thank you again very much.”

“Goodnight.”

Mr. Pomfret ran hurriedly in the direction of Queen’s College, pursued by a chorus of chimes.

Harriet went on down Holywell. She could laugh now if she wanted to; and she did laugh. She had no fear of any permanent damage to Mr. Pomfret’s heart; he was far too cross to be suffering in anything but his vanity. The incident had that rich savour of the ludicrous which neither pity nor charity can destroy. Unfortunately, she could not in decency share it with anybody; she could only enjoy it in lonely ecstasies of mirth. What Mr. Jenkyn must be thinking of her she could scarcely imagine. Did he suppose her to be an unprincipled cradle-snatcher? or a promiscuous sexual maniac? or a disappointed woman eagerly grasping at the rapidly disappearing skirts of opportunity? or what? The more she thought about her own part in the episode the funnier it appeared to her—She wondered what she should say to Mr. Jenkyn if she ever met him again.

She was surprised to find how much Mr. Pomfret’s simple-minded proposal had elated her. She ought to have been thoroughly ashamed of herself. She ought to be blaming herself for not having seen what was happening to Mr. Pomfret and taken steps to stop it—why hadn’t she? Simply, she supposed because the possibility of such a thing had never occurred to her. She had taken it for granted that she could new again attract any man’s fancy, except the eccentric fancy of Peter Wimsey. And to him she was, of course, only the creature of his making and the mirror of his own magnanimity. Reggie Pomfret’s devotion, though ridiculous, was at least single-minded;
he
was no King Cophetua; she had not to be humbly obliged to
him
for kindly taking notice of her. And that reflection, after all, was pleasurable. However loudly we may assert our own unworthiness, few of us are really offended by hearing the assertion contradicted by a disinterested party.

In this unregenerate mood she reached the College, and let herself in by the postern. There were lights in the Warden’s Lodgings, and somebody was standing at the gate, looking out. At the sound of Harriet’s footsteps, this person called out, in the Dean’s voice’—

“Is that you, Miss Vane? The Warden wants to see you.”

“What’s the matter, Dean?”

The Dean took Harriet by the arm.

“Newland hasn’t come in. You haven’t seen her anywhere?”

“No—I’ve been round at Somerville. It’s only just after twelve. She’ll probably turn up. You don’t think—?”

“We don’t know what to think—it’s not like Newland to be out without leave. And we’ve found things.”

She led Harriet into the Warden’s sitting-room. Dr. Baring was seated at her desk, her handsome face stem and judicial. In front of her stood Miss Haydock, with her hands thrust into her dressing-gown pockets; she looked excited and angry Miss Shaw curled dismally in a corner of the big couch, was crying; while Miss Millbanks the Senior Student, half-frightened and half-defiant, hovered uneasily in the background. As Harriet came in with the Dean, everybody looked hopefully towards the door and then away again.