Gaudy Night (4 page)

“Thank
goodness,
the Vice-Chancellor’s taking himself off. Now we can get rid of this filthy old bombazine and show off our party frocks.
Why
did we ever clamour for degrees and the fun of stewing in full academicals on a hot day? There! he’s gone! Give me those anything-but-glad-rags and I’ll shove them into the S.C.R. with mine. Has yours got a name on it, Miss Vane? Oh, good girl! I’ve go three unknown gowns sitting in my office already. Found lying about at the end of term. No clue to owners, of course. The untidy little beasts seem to think it’s our job to sort out their miserable belongings. They strew them everywhere, regardless, and then borrow each other’s; and if anybody’s fined for being out without a gown, it’s always because somebody pinched it. And the wretched things are always as dirty as dish clouts. They use them for dusters and drawing the fire up. When I think how our devoted generation
sweated
to get the right to these garments—and these young things don’t care
that
for them! They go about looking all bits and pieces, like illustrations to
Pendennis
—so out of date of them! But their idea of being modern is to imitate what male undergraduates were like half a century ago.”

“Some of us old students aren’t much to write home about,” said Harriet. “Look at Gubbins for instance.”

“Oh, my dear! That crashing bore. And
all
held together with safety-pins. And I wish she’d wash her neck.”

“I think,” said Miss de Vine, with painstaking readiness to set the facts in a just light, “that the colour is natural to her skin.”

“Then she should eat carrots and clear her system,” retorted the Dean, snatching Harriet’s gown from her. “No, don’t you bother. It won’t take me a minute to chuck them through the S.C.R. window. And don’t you dare to run away, or I shall
never
find you again.”

“Is my hair tidy?” inquired Miss de Vine, becoming suddenly human and hesitating with the loss of her cap and gown.

“Well,” said Harriet, surveying the thick, iron-grey coils from which a quantity of overworked hair-pins stood out like croquet-hoops, “it’s coming down just a trifle.”

“It always does,” said Miss de Vine, making vague dabs at the pins. “I think I shall have it cut it short. It must be much less trouble that way.”

“I like it as it is. That big coil suits you. Let me have a go at it, shall I?”

“I wish you would,” said the historian, thankfully submitting to having the pins thrust into place. “I am very stupid with my fingers. I do possess a hat somewhere,” she added, with an irresolute glance round the quad, as though expected to see the hat growing on a tree, “but the Dean said we’d better stay here. Oh, thank you. That feels much better—a marvellous sense of security. Ah! here’s Miss Martin. Miss Vane has kindly been acting as hair-dresser to the White Queen—but oughtn’t I to put on a hat?”

“Not now,” said Miss Martin emphatically. “I’m going to have some over tea, and so are you. I’m
ravenous.
I’ve been tagging after old Professor Boniface who’s ninety-seven and practically gaga, and screaming in his deaf ear till I’m almost
dead.
What’s the time? Well, I’m like Marjory Fleming’s turkey—I do not give a single damn for the Old Students’ Meeting; I simply must eat and drink. Let’s swoop down upon the table before Miss Shaw and Miss Stevens collar the last ices.”

Note

[1]
For the purposes of this book, Mansfield Lane is deemed to run from Mansfield Road to St. Cross Road, behind Shrewsbury College and somewhere about the junction between the Balliol and Merton Cricket grounds as they stand at present.

Tis proper to all melancholy men, saith Mercurialis, what conceit they have once entertained, to be most intent, violent and continually about it.
Invitis occurrit,
do what they may, they cannot be rid of it, against their wills they must think of it a thousand times over,
perpetuo molestantur, nec oblivisci possunt,
they are continually troubled with it, in company, out of company; at meat, at exercise, at all times and places,
non desinunt ea, quae minime volunt, cogitare;
if it be offensive especially, they cannot forget it.

—ROBERT BURTON

So far, so good, thought Harriet, changing for dinner. There had been baddish moments, like trying to renew contact with Mary Stokes. There had also been a brief encounter with Miss Hillyard, the History tutor, who had never liked her, and who had said, with wry mouth and acidulated tongue, “Well, Miss Vane, you have had some very
varied
experiences since we saw you last.” But there had been good moments too, carrying with them the promise of permanence in a Heracleitean universe. She felt it might be possible to survive the Gaudy Dinner, though Mary Stokes had dutifully bagged for her a place next herself, which was trying. Fortunately, she had contrived to get Phoebe Tucker on her other side. (In these surroundings, she thought of them still as Stokes and Tucker.)

The first thing to strike her, when the procession had slowly filed up to the High Table, and grace had been said, was the appalling noise in Hall. “Strike” was the right word. It fell upon one like the rush and weight of a shouting waterfall; it beat on the ear like the hammer-clang of some infernal smithy; it savaged the air like the metallic clatter of fifty thousand monotype machines casting type. Two hundred female tongues, released as though by a spring, burst into high, clamorous speech. She had forgotten what it was like, but it came back to her tonight how, at the beginning of every term, she had felt that if the noise were to go on like that for one minute more, she would go quite mad. Within a week, the effect of it had always worn off. Use had made her immune. But now it shattered her unaccustomed nerves with all and more than all its original violence. People screamed in her ear, and she found herself screaming back. She looked rather anxiously at Mary; could any invalid bear it? Mary seemed not to notice; she was more animated than she had been earlier in the day and was screaming quite cheerfully at Dorothy Collins. Harriet turned to Phoebe.

“Gosh! I’d forgotten what this row was like. If I scream I shall be as hoarse as a crow. I’m going to bellow at you in a fog-horn kind of voice. Do you mind?”

“Not a bit. I can hear you quite well. Why on earth did God give women such shrill voices? Though I don’t mind frightfully. It reminds me of native workmen quarrelling. They’re doing us rather well, don’t you think? Much better soup than we ever got.”

“They’ve made a special effort for Gaudy. Besides, the new Bursar’s rather good, I believe; she was something to do with Domestic Economy. Dear old Straddles had a mind above food.”

“Yes; but I liked Straddles. She was awfully decent to me when I got ill just before Schools. Do you remember?”

“What happened to Straddles when she left?”

“Oh, she’s Treasurer at Brontë College. Finance was really her line, you know. She had a real genius for figures.”

“And what became of that woman—what’s her name?—Peabody? Freebody?—you know—the one who always said solemnly that her great ambition in life was to become Bursar of Shrewsbury?”

“Oh, my dear! She went absolutely potty on some new kind of religion and joined an extraordinary sect somewhere or other where they go about in loin-cloths and have agapemones of nuts and grape-fruit. That is, if you mean Brodribb?”

“Brodribb—I knew it was something like Peabody. Fancy her of all people! So intensely practical and sub-fusc.”

“Reaction, I expect. Repressed emotional instincts and all that. She was frightfully sentimental inside, you know.”

“I know. She wormed round rather. Had a sort of G.P. for Miss Shaw. Perhaps we were all rather inhibited in those days.”

“Well, the present generation doesn’t suffer from that, I’m told.
No
inhibitions of any kind.”

“Oh, come, Phoebe. We had a good bit of liberty. Not like before Women’s Degrees. We weren’t monastic.”

“No, but we were born long enough before the War to feel a few restrictions. We inherited some sense of responsibility. And Brodribb came from a fearfully rigid sort of household—Positivists or Unitarians or Presbyterians or something. The present lot are the real War-time generation, you know.”

“So they are. Well, I don’t know that I’ve any right to throw stones at Brodribb.”

“Oh, my dear! That’s entirely different. One thing’s natural; the other’s—I don’t know, but it seems to me like complete degeneration of the grey matter. She even wrote a book.”

“About agapemones?”

“Yes. And the Higher Wisdom. And Beautiful Thought. That sort of thing. Full of bad syntax.”

“Oh, lord. Yes—that’s pretty awful, isn’t it? I can’t think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one’s grammar.”

“It’s a kind of intellectual rot that sets in, I’m afraid. But which of them causes the other, or whether they’re both symptoms of something else, I don’t know. What with Trimmer’s mental healing, and Henderson going nudist—”

“No!”

“Fact. There she is, at the next table. That’s why she’s so brown.”

“And her frock so badly cut. If you can’t be naked, be as ill-dressed as possible, I suppose.”

“I sometimes wonder whether a little normal, hearty wickedness wouldn’t be good for a great many of us.”

At this moment. Miss Mollison, from three places away on the same side of the table, leaned across her neighbours and screamed something.

“What?” screamed Phoebe.

Miss Mollison leaned still further, compressing Dorothy Collins, Betty Armstrong and Mary Stokes almost to suffocation.

“I hope Miss Vane isn’t telling you anything
too
blood-curdling!”

“No said Harriet, loudly. “Mrs. Bancroft is curdling
my
blood.”

“How?”

“Telling me the life-histories of our year.”

“Oh!” screamed Miss Mollison, disconcerted. The service of a dish of lamb and green peas intervened and broke up the formation, and her neighbours breathed again. But to Harriet’s intense horror, the question and reply seemed to have opened up an avenue for a dark, determined woman with large spectacles and rigidly groomed hair, who sat opposite to her, and who now bent over and said, in piercingly American accents: “I don’t suppose you remember me, Miss Vane? I was only in college for one term, but I would know you anywhere. I’m always recommending your books to my friends in America who are keen to study the British detective story, because I think they are just terribly good.”

“Very kind of you,” said Harriet, feebly.

“And we have a very dear mutooal acquaintance,” went on the spectacled lady.

Heavens! thought Harriet. What social nuisance is going to be dragged out of obscurity now? And who is this frightful female?

“Really?” she said, aloud, trying to gain time while she ransacked her memory. “Who’s that. Miss—”

“Schuster-Slatt” prompted Phoebe’s voice in her ear.

“Schuster-Slatt.” (Of course. Arrived in Harriet’s first summer term. Supposed to read Law. Left after one term because the conditions at Shrewsbury were too restrictive of liberty. Joined the Home Students, and passed mercifully out of one’s life.)

“How clever of you to know my name. Yes, well, you’ll be surprised when I tell you, but in my work I see so many of your British aristocracy.”

Hell! thought Harriet. Miss Schuster-Slatt’s strident tones dominated even the surrounding uproar.

“Your marvellous Lord Peter. He was so kind to me, and terribly interested when I told him I was at college with you. I think he’s just a lovely man.”

“He has very nice manners,” said Harriet. But the implication was too subtle. Miss Schuster-Slatt proceeded:

“He was just wonderful to me when I told him all about my work.” (I wonder what it is, thought Harriet.) “And of course I wanted to hear all about his thrilling detective cases, but he was much too modest to say anything. Do tell me, Miss Vane, does he wear that cute little eyeglass because of his sight, or is it part of an old English tradition?”

“I have never had the impertinence to ask him,” said Harriet.

“Now isn’t that just like your British reticence!” exclaimed Miss Schuster-Slatt; when Mary Stokes struck in with “Oh, Harriet, do tell us about Lord Peter! He must be perfectly charming if he’s at all like his photographs. Of course you know him very well, don’t you?”

“I worked with him over one case.”

“It must have been frightfully exciting. Do tell us what he’s like.”

“Seeing,” said Harriet, in angry and desperate tones, “seeing that he got me out of prison and probably saved me from being hanged, I am naturally bound to find him delightful.”

“Oh!” said Mary Stokes, flushing scarlet, and shrinking from Harriet’s furious eyes as if she had received a blow. “I’m sorry—I didn’t think—”

“Well, there,” said Miss Schuster-Slatt, “I’m afraid I’ve been very, very tactless. My mother always said to me, ‘Sadie, you’re the most tactless girl I ever had the bad luck to meet.’ But I am enthusiastic. I get carried away. I don’t stop to think. I’m just the same with my work. I don’t consider my own feelings; I don’t consider other people’s feelings. I just wade right in and ask for what I want, and I mostly get it.”

After which, Miss Schuster-Slatt, with more sensitive feeling than one might have credited her with, carried the conversation triumphantly away to the subject of her own work, which turned out to have something to do with the sterilisation of the unfit, and the encouragement of matrimony among the intelligentsia.

Harriet, meanwhile, sat miserably wondering what devil possessed her to display every disagreeable trait in her character at the mere mention of Wimsey’s name. He had done her no harm; he had only saved her from a shameful death and offered her an unswerving personal devotion; and for neither benefit had he ever claimed or expected her gratitude. It was not pretty that her only return should be a snarl of resentment. The fact is, thought Harriet, I have got a bad inferiority complex; unfortunately, the fact that I know it doesn’t help me to get rid of it. I could have liked him so much if I could have met him on an equal footing....