Gaudy Night (48 page)

“Poor Morris!” said the Dean.

“He was young at the time,” said Peter, indulgently. “It’s odd, when you come to think of it, that the expressions ‘manly’ and ‘womanly’ should be almost more offensive than their opposites. One is tempted to believe that there may be something indelicate about sex after all.”

“It all comes of this here eddication,” pronounced the Dean, as the door shut behind the last of the coffee-service. “Here we sit round in a ring dissociating ourselves from kind Mrs. Bones and that sweet girl, Miss Tape—”

“Not to mention,” put in Harriet, “those fine, manly fellows, the masculine Tapes and Boneses—”

“And clacking on in the
most
unwomanly manner about intellectual integrity.”

“While I,” said Peter, “sit desolate in the midst, like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.”

“You look it,” said Harriet, laughing. “The sole relic of humanity in a cold, bitter and indigestible wilderness.”

There was a laugh, and a momentary silence. Harriet could feel a nervous tension in the room—little threads of anxiety and expectation strung out, meeting, crossing, quivering. Now, they were all saying to themselves, now something is going to be said about IT. The ground has been surveyed, the coffee has been cleared out of the road, the combatants are stripped for action—now, this amiable gentleman with the well-filed tongue will come out in his true colours as an inquisitor, and it is all going to be very uncomfortable.

Lord Peter took out his handkerchief, polished his monocle carefully, readjusted it, looked rather severely at the Warden, and lifted up his voice in emphatic, pained and querulous complaint about the Corporation dump.

The Warden had gone, expressing courteous thanks to Miss Lydgate for the hospitality of the Senior Common Room, and graciously inviting his lordship to call upon her in her own house at any convenient time during his stay in Oxford. Various dons rose up and drifted away, murmuring that they had essays to look through before they went to bed. The talk had ranged pleasantly over a variety of topics. Peter had let the reins drop from his hands and let it go whither it would, and Harriet, realising this, had scarcely troubled to follow it. In the end, there remained only herself and Peter, the Dean, Miss Edwards (who seemed to have taken a strong fancy to Peter’s conversation), Miss Chilperic, silent and half-hidden in an obscure position and, rather to Harriet’s surprise, Miss Hillyard.

The clocks struck eleven. Wimsey roused himself and said he thought he had better be getting along. Everybody rose. The Old Quad was dark, except for the gleam of lighted windows; the sky had clouded, and a rising wind stirred the boughs of the beech-trees.

“Well, good-night,” said Miss Edwards. “I’ll see that you get a copy of that paper about blood-groups. I think you’ll find it of interest.”

“I shall, indeed,” said Wimsey. “Thank you very much.”

Miss Edwards strode briskly away.

“Good-night, Lord Peter.”

“Good-night, Miss Chilperic. Let me know when the social revolution is about to begin and I’ll come to die upon the barricades.”

“I think you would,” said Miss Chilperic, astonishingly, and, in defiance of tradition, gave him her hand.

“Good-night,” said Miss Hillyard, to the world in general, and whisked quickly past them with her head high.

Miss Chilperic flitted off into the darkness like a pale moth, and the Dean said, “Well!” And then, interrogatively, “Well?”

“Pass, and all’s well,” said Peter, placidly.

“There were one or two moments, weren’t there?” said the Dean. “But on the whole—as well as could be expected.”

“I enjoyed myself very much,” said Peter, with the mischievous note back in his voice.

“I bet you did,” said the Dean. “I wouldn’t trust you a yard. Not a yard.”

“Oh, yes, you would,” said he. “Don’t worry.”

The Dean, too, was gone.

“You left your gown in my room yesterday,” said Harriet “You’d better come and fetch it.”

“I brought yours back with me and left it at the Jowett Walk Lodge. Also your dossier. I expect they’ve been taken up.”

“You didn’t leave the dossier lying about!”

“What do you take me for? It’s wrapped up and sealed.”

They crossed the quad slowly.

“There are a lot of questions I want to ask, Peter.”

“Oh, yes. And there’s one I want to ask you. What is your second name? The one that begins with a D?”

“Deborah, I’m sorry to say. Why?”

“Deborah? Well, I’m damned. All right. I won’t call you by it. There’s Miss de Vine, I see, still working.”

The curtains of the Fellows’ window were drawn back this time, and they could see her dark, untidy head, bent over a book.

“She interests me very much,” said Peter.

“I like her, you know.”

“So do I.”

“But I’m afraid those are her kind of hairpins.”

“I know they are,” said he. He took his hand from his pocket and held it out. They were close under Tudor, and the light from an adjacent window showed a melancholy, spraddle-legged hairpin lying across his palm. “She shed this on the dais after dinner. You saw me pick it up.”

“I saw you pick up Miss Shaw’s scarf.”

“Always the gentleman. May I come up with you, or is that against the regulations?”

“You can come up.”

There were a number of students scurrying about the corridors in undress, who looked at Peter with more curiosity than annoyance. In Harriet’s room, they found her gown lying on the table, together with the dossier. Peter picked up the book, examined the paper and string and the seals which secured them, each one stamped with the crouching cat and arrogant Wimsey motto.

“If that’s been opened, I’ll make a meal of hot sealing wax.”

He went to the window and looked out into the quad.

“Not a bad observation post—in its way. Thanks. That’s all I wanted to look at.”

He showed no further curiosity, but took the gown she handed to him and followed her downstairs again.

They were half-way across the quad when he said suddenly:

“Harriet. Do you really prize honesty above every other thing?”

“I think I do. I hope so. Why?”

“If you don’t, I am the most blazing fool in Christendom. I am busily engaged in sawing off my own branch. If I am honest, I shall probably lose you altogether. If I am not—”

His voice was curiously rough, as though he were trying to control something; not, she thought, bodily pain or passion, but something more fundamental.

“If you are not,” said Harriet, “then I shall lose you, because you wouldn’t be the same person, should you?”

“I don’t know. I have a reputation for flippant insincerity. You think I’m honest?”

“I know you are. I couldn’t imagine your being anything else.”

“And yet at this moment I’m trying to insure myself against the effects of my own honesty. ‘I have tried if I could reach that great resolution, to be honest without a thought of heaven or hell.’ It looks as though I should get hell either way, though; so I need scarcely bother about the resolution. I believe you mean what you say—and I hope I should do the same thing if I didn’t believe a word of it.”

“Peter, I haven’t an idea what you’re talking about.”

“All the better. Don’t worry. I won’t behave like this another time. ‘The Duke drained a dipper of brandy-and-water and became again the perfect English gentleman.’ Give me your hand.”

She gave it to him, and he held it for a moment in a firm clasp, and then drew her arm through his. They moved on into the New Quad, arm in arm, in silence. As they passed the archway at the foot of the Hall stairs, Harriet fancied she heard somebody stir in the darkness and saw the faint glimmer of a watching face; but it was gone before she could draw Peter’s attention to it. Padgett unlocked the gate for them; Wimsey, stepping preoccupied over the threshold, tossed him a heedless goodnight.

“Good-night, Major Wimsey, sir!”

“Hullo!” Peter brought back the foot that was already in St. Cross Road, and looked closely into the porter’s smiling face.

“My God, yes! Stop a minute. Don’t tell me. Caudry—1918—I’ve got it! Padgett’s the name. Corporal Padgett.”

“Quite right, sir.”

“Well, well, well. I’m damned glad to see you. Looking dashed fit, too. How are you keeping?”

“Fine, thank you, sir.” Padgett’s large and hairy paw closed warmly over Peter’s long fingers. “I says to my wife, when I ’eard you was ’ere, ‘I’ll lay you anything you like,’ I says, ‘the Major won’t have forgotten.’”

“By Jove, no. Fancy finding you here! Last time I saw you, I was being carried away on a stretcher.”

“That’s right, sir. I ’ad the pleasure of ’elping to dig you out.”

“I know you did. I’m glad to see you now, but I was a dashed sight gladder to see you then.”

“Yes, sir. Gorblimey, sir—well, there! We thought you was gone that time. I says to Hackett—remember little Hackett, sir?”

“the little red-headed blighter? Yes, of course. What’s become of him?”

“Driving a lorry over at Reading, sir, married and three kids. I says to Hackett, ‘Lor’ lumme!’ I says, ‘there’s old Winderpane gawn’—excuse me, sir—and he says, ‘’Ell! wot ruddy luck!’ So I says, ‘Don’t stand there grizzlin’—maybe ’e ain’t gawn after all.’ So we—”

“No,” said Wimsey. “I fancy I was more frightened than hurt. Unpleasant sensation, being burned alive.”

“Well, sir! Wen we finds yer there at the bottom o’ that there old Boche dug-out with a big beam acrost yer, I says to Hackett, ‘Well,’ I says,’ ‘’e’s all ’ere, anyhow.’ And he says, ‘Thank gawd for Jerry!’ ’e says—meanin’, if it ‘adn’t been for that there dugout—”

“Yes,” said Wimsey, “I had a bit of luck there. We lost poor Mr. Danbury, though.”

“Yes, sir. Bad thing, that was. A nice young gentleman. Ever see anything of Captain Sidgwick nowadays, sir?”

“Oh, yes. I saw him only the other day at the Bellona Club. He’s not very fit these days, I’m sorry to say. Got a dose of gas, you know. Lungs groggy.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir. Remember how put about ’e was over that there pig—”

“Hush, Padgett. The less said about that pig, the better.”

“Yes, sir. Nice bit o’ crackling that pig ’ad on ’im. Coo!” Padgett smacked reminiscent lips. “You ’eard wot ’appened to Sergeant-Major Toop?”

“Toop? No—I’ve quite lost sight of him. Nothing unpleasant, I hope. Best sergeant-major I ever had.”

“Ah, he was a one.” Padgett’s grin widened. “Well, sir, ’e found ’is match all right. Little bit of a thing—no ’igher than that, but, lummy!”

“Go on, Padgett. You don’t say so.”

“Yes, sir. When I was workin’ in the camel ’ouse at the Zoo—”

“Good God, Padgett!”

“Yes, sir—I see them there and we passed the time o’ day. Went round to look ’em up afterwards. Well, there! She give ’im sergeant-major all right. Put ’im through the ’oop proper. You know the old song: Naggin’ at a feller as is six foot three—”

“And her only four foot two! Well, well! How are the mighty fallen! By the bye, I’ll tell you who I ran into the other day—now, this will surprise you—”

The stream of reminiscence ran remorselessly on, till Wimsey, suddenly reminded of his manners, apologised to Harriet and plunged hastily out, with a promise to return for another chat over old times. Padgett, still beaming, swung the heavy gate to, and locked it.

“Ah!” said Padgett, “he ain’t changed much, the major ’asn’t. He was a lot younger then, o’ course—only just gazetted—but he was regular good officer for all that—and a terror for eye-wash.
And
shavin’—lummy!”

Padgett supporting himself with one hand against the brickwork of the lodge, appeared lost in the long ago.

“‘Now, men,’ ’e’d say, when we was expectin’ a bit of a strafe, ‘if you gotter face your Maker, fer gawd’s sake, face ’im with a clean chin.’ An! Winderpane, we called ’im, along of the eyeglass, but meanin’ no disrespect. None on us wouldn’t ’ear a word agin ’im. Now, there was a chap came to us from another unit—’ulkin’ foul-mouthed fellow, wot nobody took to much—’Uggins, that was the name, ’Uggins. Well, this bloke thinks ’e’s goin’ to be funny, see—and ’e starts callin’ the major Little Percy, and usin opprobrious epithets—”

Here Padgett paused, to select an epithet fit for a lady’s ear, but, failing, repeated:

“Opprobrious epithets, miss. And I says to ’im—mind you, this was afore I got my stripes; I was jest a private then, same as ’Uggins—I says to ’im, ‘Now, that’s quite enough o’ that.’ And ’e says to me—Well, anyway, the end of it is, we ’ad a lovely scrap, all round the ’ouses.”

“Dear me,” said Harriet.

“Yes, miss. We was in rest at the time, and next morning, when the sergeant-major falls us in for parade—coo, lummy! we was a pair o’ family portraits. The sergeant-major—Sergeant-Major Toop, that was, ’im wot got married like I was sayin’—’e didn’t say nothin’—’e knew. And the adjutant, ’e knew too, and ’e didn’t say nothin’ neither. And blest if, in the middle of it all we don’t see the Major comin’ strollin’ out. So the adjutant forms us up into line, and I stands there at attention, ’oping as ’Uggins’s face looked worse nor what mine did. ‘Mornin’,’ says the Major; and the adjutant and Sergeant Major Toop says, ‘Morning, sir.’ So ’e starts to chat casual-like to the sergeant-major, and I see ’is eye goin’ up and down the line. ‘Sergeant-major!’ says he, all of a sudden. ‘Sir!’ says the sergeant-major. ‘What’s that man there been doin’ to ’imself?’ says ’e, meanin’ me. ‘Sir?’ says the sergeant-major, starin’ at me like ’e was surprised to see me. ‘Looks as if he’d had a nasty accident,’ says the Major. ‘And what about that other fellow? Don’t like to see that sort of thing. Not smart. Fall ’em out.’ So the sergeant-major falls us both out. ‘H’m,’ says the Major, ‘I see. What’s this man’s name?’ ‘Padgett, sir,’ says the sergeant-major. ‘Oh,’ says he. ‘Well, Padgett, what have you been doing to get yourself into a mess like that?’ ‘Fell over a bucket, sir,’ says I, starin’ ’ard over ’is shoulder with the only eye I could see out of, ‘Bucket?’ says ’e, ‘very awkward things, buckets. And this other man—I suppose he trod on the mop, eh, sergeant-major?’ ‘Major wants to know if you trod on the mop,’ says Sergeant-Major Toop. ‘Yessir,’ says ’Uggins, talkin’ like ’is mouth ’urt ’im. ‘Well,’ says the Major, ‘when you’ve got this lot dismissed, give these two men a bucket and a mop apiece and put ’em on fatigue. That’ll teach ’em to ’andle these dangerous implements.’ ‘Yessir,’ says Sergeant-Major Toop. ‘Carry on,’ says the Major. So we carries on. ’Uggins says to me arterwards, ‘D’you think ’e knew?’ ‘Knew?’ says I, ‘course ’e knew. Ain’t much ’e don’t know.’ Arter that, ’Uggins kep’ ’is epithets to ’isself.”