Gaudy Night (38 page)

And so forth and so on—all along the towing path, all the way up the long avenue to the Meadow Buildings and all the way round Christ Church, from Hall to Kitchen, from Cathedral to Library, from Mercury to Great Tom, while all the time the sky brooded lower and the weather became more oppressive, until Harriet, who had started out feeling as though her skull were stuffed with wool, ended up with a raging headache.

The storm held off till after Hall, except for threatenings and grumblings of thunder. At 10 o’clock the first great flash went across the sky like a searchlight, picking out roof and treetop violet-blue against the blackness, and followed by a clap that shook the walls. Harriet Hung her window open and leaned out. There was a sweet smell of approaching rain. Another flash and crash; a swift gust of wind; and then the swish and rush of falling water, the gurgle of overflowing gutters, and peace.

Truce gentle love, a parly now I crave,
Me thinks, ’tis long since first these wars begun,
Nor thou nor I, the better yet can have:
Bad is the match where neither party won.
I offer free conditions of faire peace,
My hart for hostage, that it shall remaine,
Discharge our forces heere, let malice cease,
So for my pledge, thou give me pledge againe.

—MICHAEL DRAYTON

“It was a good storm,” said the Dean.

“First-class,” said the Bursar, dryly, “for those that like it and don’t have to cope with those that don’t. The scouts’ quarters were a pandemonium; I had to go over. There was Carrie in hysterics, and Cook thinking her last hour had come, and Annie shrieking to Heaven that her darling children would be terrified and wanting to rush off to Headington then and there to comfort them—”

“I wonder you didn’t send her there at once in the best car available,” put in Miss Hillyard in sarcastic tones.

“—and one of the kitchen-maids having an outbreak of religious blues,” went on Miss Stevens, “and confessing her sins to an admiring circle. I can’t think why people have so little self-control.”

“I’m horribly afraid of thunder,” said Miss Chilperic.

“The wretched Newland was all upset again,” said the Dean. “The Infirmarian was quite frightened about her. Said the Infirmary maid was hiding in the linen-cupboard and she didn’t like to be left alone with Newland! However, Miss Shaw obligingly coped.”

“Who were the four students who were dancing in the quad in bathing dresses?” inquired Miss Pyke. “They had quite a ritual appearance. I was reminded of the ceremonial dances of the—”

“I was afraid the beeches were going to be struck,” said Miss Burrows. “I sometimes wonder whether it’s safe to have them so near the buildings. If they came down—”

“There’s a bad leak in my ceiling, Bursar,” said Mrs. Goodwin. “The rain came in like a water-spout—just over my bed. I had to move all the furniture, and the carpet is quite—”

“Anyhow,” repeated the Dean, “it was a good storm, and it’s cleared the air. Look at it. Could anybody want a better and brighter Sunday morning?”

Harriet nodded. The sun was brilliant on the wet grass and the wind blew fresh and cool.

“It’s taken my headache away, thank goodness! I’d like to do something calm and cheerful and thoroughly Oxonian. Isn’t everything a lovely colour? Like the blues and scarlets and greens in an illuminated missal!”

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said the Dean, brightly. “We’ll toddle along like two good little people and hear the University Sermon. I can’t think of anything more soothingly normal and academic than that. And Dr. Armstrong’s preaching. He’s always interesting.”

“The University Sermon?” said Harriet, amused. “Well, that’s the last thing I should have thought of for myself. But it’s an idea; definitely an idea. We’ll go.”

Yes; the Dean was right; here was the great Anglican compromise at its most soothing and ceremonial. The solemn procession of doctors in hood and habit; the Vice-Chancellor bowing to the preacher, and the beadles tripping before them; the throng of black gowns and the decorous gaiety of the summer-frocked wives of dons; the hymn and the bidding prayer; the gowned and hooded preacher austere in cassock and bands; the quiet discourse delivered in a thin, clear, scholarly voice, and dealing gently with the relations of the Christian philosophy to atomic physics. Here were the Universities and the Church of England kissing one another in righteousness and peace, like the angels in a Botticelli Nativity: very exquisitely robed, very cheerful in a serious kind of way, a little mannered, a little conscious of their fine mutual courtesy. Here, without heat, they could discuss their common problem, agreeing pleasantly or pleasantly agreeing to differ. Of the grotesque and ugly devil-shapes sprawling at the foot of the picture these angels had no word to say. What solution could either of them produce, if challenged, for the Shrewsbury problem? Other bodies would be bolder: the Church of Rome would have its answer, smooth, competent and experienced; the queer, bitterly-jarring sects of the New Psychology would have another, ugly, awkward, tentative and applied with a passionate experimentalism. It was entertaining to imagine a Freudian University indissolubly wedded to a Roman Establishment: they certainly would not live so harmoniously together as the Anglican Church and the School of Litterae Humaniores. But it was delightful to believe, if only for an hour, that all human difficulties could be dealt with in this detached and amiable spirit. “The University is a Paradise”—true, but—“then saw I that there was a way to hell even from the gates of Heaven”...

The blessing was given; the voluntary rolled out—something fugal and pre-Bach; the procession re-formed and dispersed again, passing out south and north; the congregation rose to their feet and began to stream away in an orderly disorder. The Dean, who was fond of early fugues, remained quietly in her place and Harriet sat dreamily beside her, with eyes fixed on the softly-tinted saints in the rood-screen. At length they both rose and made their way to the door. A mild, clear gust of wind met them as they passed between the twisted columns of Dr. Owen’s porch, making the Dean clutch at the peak of her rebellious cap and bellying out their gowns into wide arcs and volutes. The sky, between pillow and pillow of rounded cloud, was the pale and transparent blue of aquamarine.

Standing at the corner of Cat Street was a group of gowns, chatting with animation—among them, two Fellows of All Souls and a dignified figure which Harriet recognised as that of the Master of Balliol. Beside him was another M.A. who, as Harriet and the Dean went by, conversing of counterpoint, turned suddenly and lifted his mortarboard.

For a long moment, Harriet simply could not believe her eyes. Peter Wimsey. Peter, of all people. Peter, who was supposed to be in Warsaw, planted placidly in the High as though he had grown there from the beginning. Peter, wearing cap and gown like any orthodox Master of Arts, presenting every appearance of having piously attended the University Sermon, and now talking mild academic shop with two Fellows of All Souls and the Master of Balliol.

“And why not?” thought Harriet, after the first second of shock. “He is a Master of Arts. He was at Balliol. Why shouldn’t he talk to the Master if he I likes? But how did he get here? And why? And when did he come? And why didn’t he let me know?”

She found herself confusedly receiving introductions and presenting Lord Peter to the Dean.

“I rang up yesterday from Town,” Wimsey was saying, “but you were out.” And then more explanations—something about flying over from Warsaw, and “my nephew at the House,” and “the Master’s kind hospitality,” and sending a note round to College. Then, out of the jumble of polite nothings, a sentence she grasped clearly.

“If you are free and in College during the next half-hour or so, may I come round and look you up?”

“Yes, do,” said Harriet, lamely, “that would be delightful.” She pulled herself together. “I suppose it’s no good asking you to lunch?”

It appeared that he was lunching with the Master, and that one of the All Souls men was lunching also. In fact, a little lunch-party with, she gathered some kind of historical basis, with mention of somebody’s article for the Proceedings of Something or Other, which Wimsey was going to “step into All Souls and look at—it won’t take you ten minutes,” and references to the printing and distribution of Reformation polemical pamphlets—to Wimsey’s expert knowledge—to the other man’s expert knowledge—and to the inexpert pretence at knowledge of some historian from another university.

Then the whole group broke up. The Master raised his cap and drifted away, reminding Wimsey and the historian that lunch would be at 1:15; Peter said something to Harriet about being “round in twenty minutes,” and then vanished with the two Fellows into All Souls, and Harriet and the Dean were walking together again.

“Well!” said the Dean, “so that’s the man.”

“Yes,” said Harriet weakly, “that’s him.”

“My dear, he’s perfectly charming. You never said he was coming to Oxford.”

“I didn’t know. I thought he was in Warsaw. I knew he was supposed to be coming up some time this term to see his nephew, but I’d no idea he could get away so soon. As a matter of fact, I wanted to ask him—only I don’t suppose he could have got my letter—”

She felt that her efforts at explanation were only darkening counsel. In the end she made a clean breast of the whole affair to the Dean.

“I don’t know whether he got my letter and knows already, or whether, if he doesn’t, I ought to tell him. I know he’s absolutely safe. But whether the Warden and the S.C.R.—I didn’t expect him to turn up like this.”

“I should think it was the wisest thing you could have done,” said Miss Martin. “I shouldn’t say too much at College. Bring him along if he’ll come, and let him turn the whole lot of us inside out. A man with manners like that could twist the whole High Table round his little finger. What a mercy he’s a historian—that will put him on the right side of Miss Hillyard.”

“I never thought of him as a historian.”

“Well, he took a First, anyway... didn’t you know?”

She had not known. She had not even troubled to wonder. She had never consciously connected Wimsey and Oxford in her mind. This was the Foreign Office business all over again. If he had realised her thoughtlessness it must have hurt him.

She saw herself as a monster of callous ingratitude.

“I’m told he was looked upon as one of the ablest scholars of his year, pursued the Dean. “A. L. Smith thought highly of him. It’s a pity, in a way, he didn’t stick to History—but naturally, his chief interests wouldn’t be academic.”

“No,” said Harriet.

So the Dean had been making inquiries. Naturally, she would. Probably the whole S.C.R. could by now give her detailed information about Wimsey’s University career. That was comprehensible enough: they thought along those lines. But she herself might surely have found the energy for two minutes’ study of the Calendar.

“Where shall I put him when he comes? I suppose if I take him off to my own room it will set a bad example to the students. And it is a bit cramped.”

“You can have my sitting-room. Much better than any of the public rooms, if you’re going to discuss this beastly business. I wonder if he
did
get that letter. Perhaps the eager interest behind that penetrating eye was due to his suspicions of me. And I put it all down to my personal fascination! The man’s dangerous, though he doesn’t look it.”

“That’s why he’s dangerous. But if he read my letter, he’ll know that it isn’t you.”

Some minor confusions were cleared up when they reached College and found a note from Peter in Harriet’s pigeon-hole. It explained that he had reached London early on Saturday afternoon and found Harriet’s letter waiting for him at the Foreign Office. “I tried to ring you, but left no name, as I did not know whether you wanted me to appear personally in this matter.” He had been engaged in London that afternoon, motored to Oxford for dinner, been captured by some Balliol friends and kindly invited by the Master to stay the night, and would call “some time tomorrow” in the hope of finding her in.

So she waited in the Dean’s room, idly watching the summer sun play through the branches of the plane-tree in the New Quad and make a dancing pattern upon the plinth, until she heard his knock. When she said “Come in!” the commonplace formula seemed to take on a startling significance. For good or evil, she had called in something explosive from the outside world to break up the ordered tranquillity of the place; she had sold the breach to an alien force; she had sided with London against Oxford and with the world against the cloister.

But when he entered, she knew that the image had been a false one. He came into the quiet room as though he belonged there, and had never belonged to any other place.

“Hullo-ullo!” he said, with a faint echo of the old, flippant manner. Then he stripped off his gown and tossed it on the couch beside her own, laying his mortar-board on the table.

“I found your note when I got back. So you did get my letter?”

“Yes; I’m sorry you should have had all this bother. It seemed to me, as I was coming to Oxford in any case, I had better push along and see you. I meant to come round yesterday evening, but I got tied up with people—and I thought perhaps I had better announce myself first.”

“It was good of you to come. Sit down.”

She pulled an arm-chair forward, and he dropped into it rather heavily. She noticed, with a curious little prick of anxiety, how the clear light picked out the angles of the skull on jaw and temple.

“Peter! You look tired to death. What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Talking,” he said, discontentedly. “Words, words, words. All these interminable weeks. I’m the professional funny man of the Foreign Office. You didn’t know that? Well, I am. Not often, but waiting in the wings if wanted. Some turn goes wrong—some Under-Secretary’s secretary with small discretion and less French uses an ill-considered phrase in an after-dinner speech, and they send on the patter-comedian to talk the house into a good humour again. I take people out to lunch and tell them funny stories and work them up to mellowing point. God! what a game!”