Gaudy Night (8 page)

Relegated to a remote table at the lower end of the Hall were half-a-dozen present students, still lingering in Oxford for viva voce examinations. They babbled continually among themselves, rather obviously ignoring the invasion of their college by all these quaint old freaks who were what they themselves would be in ten years’ time, or twenty or thirty. They were a badly-turned-out bunch, Harriet thought, with an end-of-term crumpled appearance. There was an odd, shy-faced, sandy girl with pale eyes and restless fingers, and next to her a dark, beautiful one, for whose face men might have sacked cities, if it had had any sort of animation; and there was a gawky and unfinished-looking young person, very badly made up, who had a pathetic air of seeking to win hearts and never succeeding; and, most interesting of the bunch, a girl with a face like eager flame who was dressed with a maddening perversity of wrongness, but who one day would undoubtedly hold the world in her hands for good or evil. The rest were nondescript, as yet differentiated—yet nondescripts, thought Harriet, were the most difficult of all human beings to analyse. You scarcely knew they were there, until—bang! Something quite unexpected blew up like a depth charge and left you marvelling, to collect strange floating debris.

So the Hall seethed, and the scouts looked on impassively from the serving-hatches. “And what they think of us all, God only knows,” mused Harriet.

“Are you plotting an exceptionally intricate murder?” demanded Phoebe’s voice in her ear. “Or working out a difficult alibi? I’ve asked you three times to pass the cruet.”

“I’m sorry,” said Harriet, doing as she was requested. “I was meditating on the impenetrability of the human countenance.” She hesitated, on the verge of telling Phoebe about the disagreeable drawing, but her friend went on to ask some other question, and the moment passed by.

But the episode had troubled and unsettled her. Passing through the empty Hall, later in the day, she stopped to stare at the portrait of that Mary Countess of Shrewsbury, in whose honour the college had been founded. The painting was a well-executed modern copy of the one in St. John’s College Cambridge, and the queer, strong-featured face, with its ill-tempered mouth and sidelong, secretive glance, had always exercised a curious fascination over her—even in her student days, a period when the portraits of dead and gone celebrities exposed in public places incur more sarcastic comment than reverential consideration. She did not know, and indeed had never troubled to inquire, how Shrewsbury College had come to adopt so ominous a patroness. Bess of Hardwick’s daughter had been a great intellectual, indeed, but something of a holy terror; uncontrollable by her menfolk, undaunted by the Tower, contemptuously silent before the Privy Council, an obstinate recusant, a staunch friend and implacable enemy and a lady with a turn for invective remarkable even in an age when few mouths suffered from mealiness. She seemed, in fact, to be the epitome of every alarming quality which a learned woman is popularly credited with developing. Her husband, the “great and glorious Earl of Shrewsbury,” had purchased domestic peace at a price; for, said Bacon, there was “a greater than he, which is my Lady of Shrewsbury.” And that, of course, was a dreadful thing to have said about one. The prospect seemed discouraging for Miss Schuster-Slatt’s matrimonial campaign, since the rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed, to Miss Schuster-Slatt’s distress, or find a still greater man to marry her. And that limited the great woman’s choice considerably, since, though the world of course abounded in great men, it contained a very much larger number of middling and common-place men. The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all.

“Though of course,” Harriet reminded herself, “a woman may achieve greatness, or at any rate great renown, by merely being a wonderful wife and mother, like the mother of the Gracchi; whereas the men who have achieved great renown by being devoted husbands and fathers might be counted on the fingers of one hand. Charles I was an unfortunate king, but an admirable family man. Still, you would scarcely class him as one of the world’s great fathers, and his children were not an unqualified success. Dear me! Being a great father is either a very difficult or a very sadly unrewarded profession. Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him—or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them. An interesting thesis for research. Elizabeth Barrett? Well, she had a great husband, but he was great in his own right so to speak—and Mr. Barrett was not exactly—The Brontës? Well, hardly. Queen Elizabeth? She had a remarkable father, but devoted helpfulness towards his daughters was scarcely his leading characteristic. And she was so wrong-headed as to have no husband—Queen Victoria? You might make a good deal out of poor Albert, but you couldn’t do much with the Duke of Kent.”

Somebody passed through the Hall behind her; it was Miss Hillyard. With mischievous determination to get some response out of this antagonistic personality, Harriet laid before her the new idea for a historical thesis.

“You have forgotten physical achievements,” said Miss Hillyard. “I believe many female singers, dancers, Channel swimmers and tennis stars owe everything to their devoted fathers.”

“But the fathers are not famous.”

“No. Self-effacing men are not popular with either sex. I doubt whether even your literary skill would gain recognition for their virtues. Particularly if you select your women for their intellectual qualities. It will be a short thesis in that case.”

“Gravelled for lack of matter?”

“I’m afraid so. Do you know any man who sincerely admires a woman for her brains?”

“Well,” said Harriet, “certainly not many.”

“You may think you know
one,
” said Miss Hillyard with a bitter emphasis. “Most of us think at some time or other that we know
one.
But the man usually has some other little axe to grind.”

“Very likely,” said Harriet. “You don’t seem to have a very high opinion of men—of the male character, I mean, as such.”

“No,” said Miss Hillyard, “not very high. But they have an admirable talent for imposing their point of view on society in general. All women are sensitive to male criticism. Men are not sensitive to female criticism. They despise the critics.”

“Do you, personally, despise male criticism?”

“Heartily, said Miss Hillyard. “But it does damage. Look at this University. All the men have been amazingly kind and sympathetic about the Women’s Colleges. Certainly. But you won’t find them appointing women to big University posts. That would never do. The women might perform their work in a way beyond criticism. But they are quite pleased to see us playing with our little toys.”

“Excellent fathers and family men,” murmured Harriet.

“In that sense—yes,” said Miss Hillyard, and laughed rather unpleasantly.

Something funny there, thought Harriet. A personal history, probably. How difficult it was not to be embittered by personal experience. She went down to the J.C.R. and examined herself in the mirror. There had been a look in the History Tutor’s eyes that she did not wish to discover in her own.

Sunday evening prayers. The College was undenominational, but some form of Christian worship was held to be essential to community life. The chapel, with its stained glass windows, plain oak panelling and unadorned Communion Table was a kind of Lowest Common Multiple of all sects and weeds. Harriet, making her way towards it, remembered that she had not seen her gown since the previous afternoon, when the Dean had taken it to the S.C.R. Not liking to penetrate uninvited into that Holy of Holies, she went in search of Miss Martin, who had, it appeared, taken both gowns together to her own room. Harriet wriggled into the gown, one fluttering sleeve of which struck an adjacent table with a loud bang.

“Mercy!” said the Dean, “what’s that?”

“My cigarette-case,” said Harriet. “I thought I’d lost it. I remember now. I hadn’t a pocket yesterday, so I shoved it into the sleeve of my gown. After all, that’s what these sleeves are for, aren’t they?”

“Oh, my dear! Mine are always a perfect dirty-clothes bag by the end of term. When I have absolutely
no
clean handkerchiefs left in the drawer my scout turns out my gown sleeves. My best collection worked out at twenty two—but then I’d had a bad cold one week. Dreadful insanitary garment. Here’s your cap. Never mind taking your hood—you can come back here for it. What have you been doing today?—I’ve scarcely seen you.”

Again Harriet felt an impulse to mention the unpleasant drawing, but again she refrained. She felt she was getting rather unbalanced about it. Why think about it at all? She mentioned her conversation with Miss Hillyard

“Lor’!” said the Dean. “That’s Miss Hillyard’s hobby-horse. Rubbidge, as Mrs. Gamp would say. Of
course
men don’t like having their poor little noses put out of joint—who does? I think it’s perfectly noble of them to let us come trampling over their University at all, bless their hearts. They’ve been used to being lords and masters for hundreds of years and they want a bit of time to get used to the change. Why, it takes a man months and months to reconcile himself to a new hat. And
just
when you’re preparing to send it to the jumble sale, he says. ‘That’s rather a nice hat you’ve got on, where did you get it?’ And you say, ‘My dear Henry, it’s the one I had last year and you said made me look like an organ-grinder’s monkey.’ My brother-in-law says that every time, and it does make my sister so wild.”

They mounted the steps of the chapel.

It had not, after all, been so bad. Definitely not so bad as one had expected. Though it was melancholy to find that one had grown out of Mary Stokes, and a little tiresome, in a way, that Mary Stokes refused to recognise the fact. Harriet had long ago discovered that one could not like people any the better, merely because they were ill, or dead—still less because one had once liked them very much. Some happy souls could go through life without making this discovery, and they were the men and women who were called “sincere.” Still, there remained old friends whom one was glad to meet again, like the Dean and Phoebe Tucker. And really, everybody had been quite extraordinarily decent. Rather inquisitive and silly about “the man Wimsey,” some of them, but no doubt with the best intentions. Miss Hillyard might be an exception, but there had always been something a little twisted and uncomfortable about Miss Hillyard.

As the car wound its way over the Chilterns, Harriet grinned to herself, thinking of her parting conversation with the Dean and Bursar.

“Be sure and write us a new book soon. And remember, if ever we get a mystery at Shrewsbury we shall call upon you to come and disentangle it.”

“All right,” said Harriet. “When you find a mangled corpse in the buttery, send me a wire—and be sure you let Miss Barton view the body, and then she won’t so much mind my haling the murderess off to justice.”

And suppose they actually did find a bloody corpse in the buttery, how surprised they would all be. The glory of a college was that nothing drastic ever happened in it. The most frightful thing that was ever likely to happen was that an undergraduate should “take the wrong turning.” The purloining of a parcel or two by a porter had been enough to throw the whole Senior Common Room into consternation. Bless their hearts, how refreshing and soothing and good they all were, walking beneath their ancient beeches and meditating on
on kai me on
and the finance of Queen Elizabeth.

“I’ve broken the ice,” she said aloud, “and the water wasn’t so cold after all. I shall go back, from time to time. I shall go back.” She picked out a pleasant pub for lunch and ate with a good appetite. Then she remembered that her cigarette-case was still in her gown. She had brought the garment in with her on her arm, and, thrusting her hand down to the bottom of the long sleeve, she extracted the case. A piece of paper came out with it—an ordinary sheet of scribbling paper folded into four. She frowned at a disagreeable memory as she unfolded it.

There was a message pasted across it, made up of letters cut apparently from the headlines of a newspaper.

YOU DIRTY MURDERESS. AREN’T YOU
ASHAMED TO SHOW YOUR FACE?

“Hell!” said Harriet. “Oxford, thou too?” She sat very still for a few moments. Then she struck a match and set light to the paper. It burned briskly, till she was forced to drop it upon her plate. Even then, the letters showed grey upon the crackling blackness, until she pounded their spectral shapes to powder with the back of a spoon.

Thou canst not, Love, disgrace me half so ill,
To set a form upon desired change,
As I’ll myself disgrace: knowing thy will,
I will acquaintance strangle and look strange,
Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue
My sweet beloved name no more shall dwell,
Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong
And haply of our old acquaintance tell.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

There are incidents in one’s life which, through some haphazard coincidence of time and mood, acquire a symbolic value. Harriet’s attendance at the Shrewsbury Gaudy was of this kind. In spite of minor incongruities and absurdities, it had shown itself to have one definite significance; it had opened up to her the vision of an old desire, long obscured by a forest of irrelevant fancies, but now standing up unmistakable, like a tower set on a hill. Two phrases rang in her ears: the Dean’s, “It’s the work you’re doing that really counts”; and that one melancholy lament for eternal loss: “Once, I was a scholar.”

“Time is,” quoth the Brazen Head; “time was; time is past.” Philip Boyes was dead; and the nightmares that had haunted the ghastly midnight of his passing were gradually fading away. Clinging on, by blind instinct, to the job that had to be done, she had fought her way back to an insecure stability. Was it too late to achieve wholly the clear eye and the untroubled mind? And what, in that case, was she to do with one powerful fetter which still tied her ineluctably to the bitter past? What about Peter Wimsey?