Gaudy Night (32 page)

And then the dons began to arrive, full of their vacation activities and ready to take up the burden of the most exacting, yet most lovable term of the academic year. Harriet watched them come, wondering which of those cheerful and determined faces concealed a secret. Miss de Vine had been consulting a library in some ancient Flemish town, where was preserved a remarkable family correspondence dealing with trade conditions between England and Flanders under Elizabeth. Her mind was full of statistics about wool and pepper, and it was difficult to get her to think back to what she had done on the last day of the Hilary Term. She had undoubtedly burnt some old papers—there might have been newspapers among them—certainly she never read the
Daily Trumpet
—she could throw no light on the mutilated newspaper found in the fireplace.

Miss Lydgate—as Harriet had expected—had contrived in a few short weeks to make havoc of her proofs. She was apologetic. She had spent a most interesting long week-end with Professor Somebody, who was a great authority upon Greek quantitative measures; and he had discovered several passages that contained inaccuracies and thrown an entirely fresh light upon the argument of Chapter Seven. Harriet groaned dismally.

Miss Shaw had taken five other students for a reading-party, had seen four new plays and bought a rather exciting summer outfit. Miss Pyke had spent an enthralling time assisting the curator of a local museum to put together the fragments of three figured pots and a quantity of burial-urns that had been dug up in a field in Essex. Miss Hillyard was really glad to be back in Oxford; she had had to spend a month at her sister’s house while the sister was having a baby; looking after her brother-in-law seemed to have soured her temper. The Dean, on the other hand, had been helping to get a niece married and had found the whole business full of humour. “One of the bridesmaids went to the wrong church and only turned up when it was all over, and there were at
least
two hundred of us squeezed into a room that would only hold fifty, and I only got half a glass of champagne and no wedding-cake, my tummy was flapping against my spine; and the bridegroom lost his hat at the last moment, and, my
dear!
would you believe it? people
still
give plated biscuit-barrels!” Miss Chilperic had gone with her fiancé and his sister to a number of interesting places to study mediaeval domestic sculpture. Miss Burrows had spent most of her time playing golf. There arrived also a reinforcement in the person of Miss Edwards, the Science tutor, just returned from taking a term’s leave. She was a young and active woman, square in face and shoulder, with bobbed hair and a stand-no-nonsense manner. The only member missing from the Senior Common Room was Mrs. Goodwin, whose small son (a most unfortunate child) had come out with measles immediately upon his return to school and again required his mother’s nursing.

“Of course she can’t help it,” said the Dean, “but it’s a very great nuisance, just at the beginning of the Summer Term. If I’d only known, I could have come back earlier.”

“I don’t see,” observed Miss Hillyard, grimly, “what else you can expect, if you give jobs to widows with children. You have to be prepared for these perpetual interruptions. And for some reason, these domestic pre-occupations always have to be put before the work.”

“Well,” said the Dean, “one must put work aside in a case of serious illness.”

“But all children get measles.”

“Yes; but he’s not a very strong child, you know. His father was tubercular, poor man—in fact, that’s what he died of—and if measles should turn to pneumonia, as it so often does, the consequences might be serious.”

“But
has
it turned to pneumonia?”

“They’re afraid it may. He’s got it very badly. And, as he’s a nervous little creature, he naturally likes to have his mother with him. And in any case, she’ll be in quarantine.”

“The longer she stays with him, the longer she’ll
be
in quarantine.”

“It’s very tiresome, of course,” put in Miss Lydgate, mildly. “But if Mrs. Goodwin had isolated herself and come back at the earliest possible moment—as she very bravely offered to do—she would have been suffering a great deal of anxiety.”

“A great many of us have to suffer from anxiety in one way or another,” said Miss Hillyard, sharply. “I have been very anxious about my sister. It is always an anxious business to have a first baby at thirty-five. But if the event had happened to occur in term-time, it would have had to take place without my assistance.”

“It is always difficult to say which duty one should put first,” said Miss Pyke. “Each case must be decided individually. I presume that, in bringing children into the world one accepts a certain responsibility towards them.”

“I’m not denying it,” said Miss Hillyard. “But if the domestic responsibility is to take precedence of the public responsibility, then the work should be handed over to someone else to do.”

“But the children must be fed and clothed,” said Miss Edwards.

“Quite so. But the mother should not take a resident post.”

“Mrs. Goodwin is an excellent secretary,” said the Dean. “I should be very sorry to lose her. And it’s nice to think that we are able to help her in her very difficult position.”

Miss Hillyard lost patience.

“The fact is, though you will never admit it, that everybody in this place has an inferiority complex about married women and children. For all your talk about careers and independence, you all believe in your hearts that we ought to abase ourselves before any woman who has fulfilled her animal functions.”

“That is absolute nonsense,” said the Bursar.

“It is natural, I suppose, to feel that married women lead a fuller life,” began Miss Lydgate.

“And a more useful one,” retorted Miss Hillyard. “Look at the fuss that’s made over ‘Shrewsbury grandchildren’! Look how delighted you all are when old students get married! As if you were saying ‘Aha! education doesn’t unfit us for real life after all!’ And when a really brilliant scholar throws away all her prospects to marry a curate, you say perfunctorily, ‘What a pity! But of course her own life must come first.’”

“I’ve
never
said such a thing,” cried the Dean indignantly. “I always say they’re perfect
fools
to marry.”

“I shouldn’t mind,” said Miss Hillyard, unheeding, “if you said openly that intellectual interests were only a second-best; but you pretend to put them first in theory and are ashamed of them in practice.”

“There’s no need to get so heated about it,” said Miss Barton, breaking in upon the angry protest of Miss Pyke. “After all,
some
of us may have deliberately chosen not to marry. And, if you will forgive my saying so—”

At this ominous phrase, always the prelude to something quite unforgivable, Harriet and the Dean broke hastily into the discussion.

“Considering that we are devoting our whole lives—”

“Even for a man, it is not always easy to say—”

Their common readiness confounded their good intention. Each broke off and begged the other’s pardon, and Miss Barton went on unchecked:

“It is not altogether wise—or convincing—to show so much animus against married women. It was the same unreasonable prejudice that made you get that scout removed from your staircase.”

“I object,” said Miss Hillyard, with a heightened colour, “to this preferential treatment. I do not see why we should put up with slackness on duty because a servant or a secretary happens to be a widow with children. I do not see why Annie should be given a room to herself in the Scouts’ Wing, and charge over a corridor, when servants who have been here for longer than she has have to be content to share a room. I do not—”

“Well,” said Miss Stevens, “I think she is entitled to a little consideration. A woman who has been accustomed to a nice home of her own—”

“Very likely,” said Miss Hillyard. “At any rate, it was not
my
lack of consideration that led to her precious children being placed in the charge of a common thief.”

“I was always against that,” said the Dean.

“And why did you give in? Because poor Mrs. Jukes was such a nice woman and had a family to keep. She
must
be considered and rewarded for being fool enough to marry a scoundrel. What’s the good of pretending that you put the interests of the College first, when you hesitate for two whole terms about getting rid of a dishonest porter, because you’re so sorry for his family?”

“There,” said Miss Allison, “I entirely agree with you. The College ought to come first in a case like that.”

“It ought always to come first. Mrs. Goodwin ought to see it, and resign her post if she can’t carry out her duties properly.” She stood up. “Perhaps, however, it is as well that she should be away and stay away. You may remember that,
last
time she was away, we had no trouble from anonymous letters or monkey-tricks.”

Miss Hillyard put down her coffee-cup and stalked out of the room. Everybody looked uncomfortable.

“Bless my heart!” said the Dean.

“Something very wrong there,” said Miss Edwards, bluntly.

“She’s so prejudiced,” said Miss Lydgate. “I always think it’s a very great pity she never married.”

Miss Lydgate had a way of putting into language that a child could understand things which other people did not say, or said otherwise.

“I should be sorry for the man, I must say,” observed Miss Shaw; “but perhaps I am showing an undue consideration for the male sex. One is almost afraid to open one’s mouth.”

“Poor Mrs. Goodwin!” exclaimed the Bursar. “The very last person!”

She got up angrily and went out. Miss Lydgate followed her. Miss Chilperic, who had said nothing, but looked quite alarmed, murmured that she must get along to work. The Common Room slowly cleared, and Harriet was left with the Dean.

“Miss Lydgate has the most terrifying way of hitting the nail on the head,” said Miss Martin; “because it is obviously much more likely that—”

“A great deal more likely,” said Harriet.

Mr. Jenkyn was a youngish and agreeable don whom Harriet had met the previous term at a party in North Oxford-the same party, in fact, which had led to her acquaintance with Mr. Reginald Pomfret. He resided at Magdalen, and was incidentally one of the pro-Proctors. Harriet had happened to say something to him about the Magdalen May-day ceremony, and he had promised to send her a ticket for the Tower. Being a scientist and a man of scrupulously exact mind, he remembered his promise; and the ticket duly arrived.

None of the Shrewsbury S.C.R. was going. Most of them had been up on May mornings before. Miss de Vine had not; but though she had been offered tickets, her heart would not stand the stairs. There were students who
had
received invitations; but they were not students whom Harriet knew. She therefore set off alone, well before sunrise, having made an appointment to meet Miss Edwards when she came down and take an outrigger down to the Isis for a pipe-opener before having breakfast on the river.

The choristers had sung their hymn. The sun had risen, rather red and angry, casting a faint flush over the roofs and spires of the waking city. Harriet leaned over the parapet, looking down upon the heartbreaking beauty of the curved High Street, scarcely disturbed as yet by the roar of petrol-driven traffic. Under her feet, the tower began to swing to the swinging of the bells. The little group of bicyclists and pedestrians far below began to break up and move away. Mr. Jenkyn came up, said a few pleasant words, remarked that he had to hurry off to go bathing with a friend at Parson’s Pleasure; there was no need for her to hurry—could she get down the stairs all right alone?

Harriet laughed and thanked him, and he took leave of her at the stair head. She moved to the East side of the tower. There lay the river and Magdalen Bridge, with its pack of punts and canoes. Among them, she distinguished the sturdy figure of Miss Edwards, in a bright orange jumper. It was wonderful to stand so above the world, with a sea of sound below and an ocean of air above, all mankind shrunk to the proportions of an ant-heap. True, a cluster of people still lingered upon the tower itself—her companions in this airy hermitage. They too, spell-bound with beauty—

Great Scott! What was that girl trying to do?

Harriet made a dive at the young woman who was just placing one knee on the stonework and drawing herself up between two crenellations of the parapet.

“Here!” she said, “you mustn’t do that. It’s dangerous.”

The girl, a thin, fair, frightened-looking child, desisted at once. “I only wanted to look over.”

“Well, that’s very silly of you. You might get giddy. You’d better come along down. It would be very unpleasant for the Magdalen authorities if anyone fell over. They might have to stop letting people come up.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”

“Well, you should think. Is anybody with you?”

“No.”

“I’m going down now; you’d better come too.”

“Very well.”

Harriet shepherded the girl down the dark spiral. She had no proof of anything but rash curiosity, but she wondered. The girl spoke with a slightly common accent, and Harriet would have put her down for a shop-assistant, but for the fact that tickets for the Tower were more likely to be restricted to University people and their friends. She might be an undergraduate, come up with a County Scholarship. In any case, one was perhaps attaching too much importance to the incident.

They were passing the bell-chamber now, and the brazen clamour was loud and insistent. It reminded her of a story that Peter Wimsey had told her, years ago now, one day when only a resolute determination to talk on and on enabled him to prevent a most unfortunate outing from ending in a quarrel. Something about a body in a belfry, and a flood, and the great bells bawling the alarm across three counties.

The noise of the bells died down behind her as she passed, and the recollection with it; but she had paused for a moment in the awkward descent, and the girl, whoever she was, had got ahead of her. When she reached the foot of the stair and came out into clear daylight, she saw the slight figure scurrying off through the passage into the quad. She was doubtful whether to pursue it or not. She followed at a distance, watched it turn downwards up the High, and suddenly found herself almost in the arms of Mr. Pomfret, coming down from Queen’s in a very untidy grey flannel suit with a towel over his arm.