Gaudy Night Page 6

  ‘We were afraid he did,’ said Miss Lydgate. ‘Of course, it’s a responsible post for a man who isn’t of very strong character. He’ll do much better where he is.’

  ‘You’ve lost Agnes, too, I see.’

  ‘Yes – she was Head-Scout in your time; yes, she has left. She began to find the work too much for her and had to retire. I’m glad to say we were able to squeeze out a tiny pension for her – only a trifle, but as you know, our income has to be stretched very carefully to cover everything. And we arranged a little scheme by which she takes in odd jobs of mending and so on for the students and attends to the College linen. It all helps; and she’s especially glad because that crippled sister of hers can do part of the work and contribute something to their small income. Agnes says the poor soul is so much happier now that she need not feel herself a burden.’

  Harriet marvelled, not for the first time, at the untiring conscientiousness of administrative women. Nobody’s interests ever seemed to be overlooked or forgotten, and an endless goodwill made up for a perennial scarcity of funds.

  After a little more talk about the doings of past dons and students, the conversation turned upon the new Library. The books had long outgrown their old home in Tudor Building, and were at last to be adequately housed.

  ‘And when that is finished,’ said Miss Lydgate, ‘we shall feel that our College Buildings are substantially complete. It does seem rather wonderful to those of us who remember the early days when we only had the one funny old house with ten students, and were chaperoned to lectures in a donkey-carriage. I must say we rather wept to see the dear old place pulled down to make way for the Library. It held so many memories.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Harriet, sympathetically. She supposed that there was no moment of the past upon which this experienced and yet innocent soul could not dwell with unaffected pleasure. The entrance of another old pupil cut short her interview with Miss Lydgate, and she went out, vaguely envious, to encounter the persistent Miss Mollison, primed with every remorseless detail of the clock incident. It gave her pleasure to inform Miss Mollison that Mr. A. E. W. Mason had hit on the same idea earlier. Unquenchable, Miss Mollison proceeded to question her victim eagerly about Lord Peter Wimsey, his manners, customs and appearance; and when Miss Mollison was driven away by Miss Schuster-Slatt, the irritation was little relieved, for Harriet was subjected to a long harangue about the sterilisation of the unfit, to which (it appeared) a campaign to encourage the marriage of the fit was a necessary corollary. Harriet agreed that intellectual women should marry and reproduce their kind; but she pointed out that the English husband had something to say in the matter and that, very often, he did not care for an intellectual wife.

  Miss Schuster-Slatt said she thought English husbands were lovely, and that she was preparing a questionnaire to be circulated to the young men of the United Kingdom, with a view to finding out their matrimonial preferences.

  ‘But English people won’t fill up questionnaires,’ said Harriet.

  ‘Won’t fill up questionnaires?’ cried Miss Schuster-Slatt taken aback.

  ‘No,’ said Harriet, ‘they won’t. As a nation we are not questionnaire-conscious.’

  ‘Well, that’s too bad,’ said Miss Schuster-Slatt. ‘But I do hope you will join the British Branch of our League for the Encouragement of Matrimonial Fitness. Our President, Mrs. J. Poppelhinken, is a wonderful woman. You would so much like to meet her. She will be coming to Europe next year. In the meantime I am here to do propaganda and study the whole question from the angle of British mentality.’

  ‘I’m afraid you will find it a very difficult job. I wonder,’ added Harriet (for she felt she owed Miss Schuster-Slatt a riposte for her unfortunate observations of the night before), ‘whether your intentions are as disinterested as you make out. Perhaps you are thinking of investigating the loveliness of English husbands in a personal and practical way.’

  ‘Now you’re making fun of me,’ said Miss Schuster-Slatt, with perfect good-humour. ‘No. I’m just the little worker-bee, gathering honey for the queens to eat.’

  ‘How all occasions do inform against me!’ muttered Harriet to herself. One would have thought that Oxford at least would offer a respite from Peter Wimsey and the marriage question. But although she herself was a notoriety, if not precisely a celebrity, it was an annoying fact that Peter was a still more spectacular celebrity, and that, of the two, people would rather know about him than about her. As regards marriage – well, here one certainly had a chance to find out whether it worked or not. Was it worse to be a Mary Attwood (née Stokes) or a Miss Schuster-Slatt? Was it better to be a Phœbe Bancroft (née Tucker) or a Miss Lydgate? And would all these people have turned out exactly the same, married or single?

  She wandered into the J.C.R. which was empty, but for one drab and ill-dressed woman who sat desolately reading an illustrated paper. As Harriet passed, this woman looked up and said, rather tentatively, ‘Hullo! it’s Miss Vane, isn’t it?’

  Harriet racked her memory hastily. This was obviously someone very much senior to herself – she looked nearer fifty than forty. Who on earth?

  ‘I don’t suppose you remember me,’ said the other. ‘Catherine Freemantle.’

  (Catherine Freemantle, good God! But she had been only two years senior to Harriet. Very brilliant, very smart, very lively and the outstanding scholar of her year. What in Heaven’s name had happened to her?)

  ‘Of course I remember you,’ said Harriet, ‘but I’m always so stupid about names. What have you been doing?’

  Catherine Freemantle, it seemed, had married a farmer, and everything had gone wrong. Slumps and sickness and tithe and taxes and the Milk Board and the Marketing Board, and working one’s fingers to the bone for a bare living and trying to bring up children – Harriet had read and heard enough about agricultural depression to know that the story was a common one enough. She was ashamed of being and looking so prosperous. She felt she would rather be tried for life over again than walk the daily treadmill of Catherine’s life. It was a saga, in its way, but it was preposterous. She broke in rather abruptly upon a complaint against the hard-heartedness of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

  ‘But Miss Freemantle – I mean, Mrs. – Mrs. Bendick – it’s absurd that you should have to do this kind of thing. I mean, pick your own fruit and get up at all hours to feed poultry and slave like a navvy. Surely to goodness it would have paid far better for you to take on some kind of writing or intellectual job and get someone else to do the manual work.’

  ‘Yes, it would. But at the beginning I didn’t see it like that. I came down with a lot of ideas about the dignity of labour. And besides, at that time, my husband wouldn’t have liked it much if I’d separated myself from his interests. Of course, we didn’t think it would turn out like this.’

  What damned waste! was all Harriet could say to herself. All that brilliance, all that trained intelligence, harnessed to a load that any uneducated country girl could have drawn, far better. The thing had its compensations, she supposed. She asked the question bluntly.

  Worth it? said Mrs. Bendick. Oh, yes, it was certainly worth it. The job was worth doing. One was serving the land. And that, she managed to convey, was a service harsh and austere indeed, but a finer thing than spinning words on paper.

  ‘I’m quite prepared to admit that,’ said Harriet. ‘A plough share is a nobler object than a razor. But if your natural talent is for barbering, wouldn’t it be better to be a barber, and a good barber – and use the profits (if you like) to speed the plough? However grand the job may be, is it your job?’

  ‘It’s got to be my job now,’ said Mrs. Bendick. ‘One can’t go back to things. One gets out of touch and one’s brain gets rusty. If you’d spent your time washing and cooking for a family and digging potatoes and feeding cattle, you’d know that that kind of thing takes the edge off the razor. You needn’t think I don’t envy you people your easy life; I do. I came to the Gaudy out of sentiment,
and I wish I’d stopped away. I’m two years older than you, but I look twenty. None of you cares in the least for my interests, and yours all seem to me to be mere beating the air. You don’t seem to have anything too do with real life. You are going about in a dream.’ She stopped speaking, and her angry voice softened. ‘But it’s a beautiful dream in its way. It seems queer to me now to think that once I was a scholar . . . I don’t know. You may be right after all. Learning and literature have a way of outlasting the civilisation that made them.’

  ‘The word and nought else

  in time endures.

  Not you long after,

  perished and mute

  will last, but the defter

  viol and lute,’

  quoted Harriet. She stared vaguely out into the sunshine. ‘It’s curious – because I have been thinking exactly the same thing – only in a different connection. Look here! I admire you like hell, but I believe you’re all wrong. I’m sure one should do one’s own job, however trivial, and not persuade one’s self into doing somebody else’s, however noble.’

  As she spoke, she remembered Miss de Vine; here was a new aspect of persuasion.

  ‘That’s all very well,’ replied Mrs. Bendick. ‘But one’s rather apt to marry into somebody else’s job.’

  True; but Harriet was offered the opportunity of marrying into a job as near her own as made no great difference. And into money enough to make any job supererogatory. Again she saw herself unfairly provided with advantages which more deserving people desired in vain.

  ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘marriage is the really important job isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Mrs. Bendick. ‘My marriage is happy as marriages go. But I often wonder whether my husband wouldn’t have been better off with another kind of wife. He never says so, but I wonder. I think he knows I miss – things, and resents it sometimes. I don’t know why I should say this to you – I’ve never said it to anybody and I never knew you very well, did I?’

  ‘No; and I haven’t been very sympathetic, either. In fact, I’ve been disgustingly rude.’

  ‘You have, rather,’ said Mrs. Bendick. ‘But you have such a beautiful voice to be rude in.’

  ‘Good gracious!’ said Harriet.

  ‘Our farm’s on the Welsh border, and the people all speak in the most hideous local sing-song. Do you know what makes me feel most home-sick here? The cultured speech. The dear old much-abused Oxford accent. That’s funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘I thought the noise in Hall was more like a cage full of peacocks.’

  ‘Yes; but out of Hall you can pick out the people who speak the right way. Lots of them don’t, of course; but some do. You do; and you have a lovely voice into the bargain. Do you remember the old Bach Choir days?’

  ‘Do I not? Do you manage to get any music on the Welsh border? The Welsh can sing.’

  ‘I haven’t much time for music. I try to teach the children.’

  Harriet took advantage of this opening to make suitable domestic inquiries. She parted eventually from Mrs. Bendick with a depressed feeling that she had seen a Derby winner making shift with a coal-cart.

  Sunday lunch in Hall was a casual affair. Many people did not attend it, having engagements in the town. Those who did, dropped in as and when they liked, fetched their food from the serving-hatches and consumed it in chattering groups wherever they could find seats. Harriet, having seized a plate of cold ham for herself, looked round for a lunch partner, and was thankful to see Phœbe Tucker just come in and being helped by the attendant scout to a portion of cold roast beef. The two joined forces, and sat down at the far end of a long table which ran parallel to the High and at right angles to the other tables. From there they commanded the whole room, including the High Table itself and the row of serving-hatches. As her eye wandered from one briskly occupied luncher to the next, Harriet kept on asking herself, Which? Which of all these normal and cheerful-looking women had dropped that unpleasant paper in the quad the night before? Because you never knew; and the trouble of not knowing was that you dimly suspected everybody. Haunts of ancient peace were all very well, but very odd things could crawl and creep beneath lichen-covered stones. The Warden in her great carved chair was bending her stately head and smiling at some jest of the Dean’s. Miss Lydgate was attending, with eager courtesy, to the wants of a very old student indeed, who was almost blind. She had helped her stumbling feet up the three steps of the dais, had fetched her lunch from the hatch and was now putting salad on her plate for her. Miss Stevens, the Bursar, and Miss Shaw, the Modern Language Tutor, had collected about them three other old students of considerable age and attainments; their conversation was animated and apparently amusing. Miss Pyke, the Classical Tutor, was deep in a discussion with a tall, robust woman whom Phœbe Tucker had recognised and pointed out to Harriet as an eminent archæologist, and in a momentary flash of comparative silence, the Tutor’s high voice rang out unexpectedly: ‘The tumulus at Halos appears to be an isolated instance. The cist-graves of Theotokou . . .’ Then the clamour again closed over the argument. Two other dons, whom Harriet did not recognise (they were new since her day) appeared from their gestures to be discussing millinery. Miss Hillyard, whose sarcastic tongue tended to isolate her from her colleagues, was slowly eating her lunch and glancing at a pamphlet she had brought in with her. Miss de Vine, arriving late, sat down beside Miss Hillyard and began to consume ham in a detached way with her eyes fixed on vacancy.

  Then the Old Students in the body of the Hall – all types, all ages, all varieties of costume. Was it the curious round-shouldered woman in yellow djibbah and sandals, with her hair coiled in two snail-shells over her ears? Or the sturdy, curly-headed person in tweeds, with a masculine-looking waistcoat and the face like the back of a cab? Or the tightly-corseted peroxide of sixty, whose hat would better have suited an eighteen-year-old débutante at Ascot? Or one of the innumerable women with ‘school-teacher’ stamped on their resolutely cheery countenances? Or the plain person of indeterminate age who sat at the head of her table with the air of a chairman of committee? Or that curious little creature dressed in unbecoming pink, who looked as though she had been carelessly packed away in a drawer all winter and put into circulation again without being ironed? Or that handsome, well-preserved business woman of fifty with the well-manicured hands, who broke into the conversation of total strangers to inform them that she had just opened a new hairdressing establishment ‘just off Bond Street’? Or that tall, haggard, tragedy-queen in black silk marocain who looked like Hamlet’s aunt, but was actually Aunt Beatrice who ran the Household Column in the Daily Mercury? Or the bony woman with the long horse-face who had devoted herself to Settlement work? Or even that unconquerably merry and bright little dumpling of a creature who was the highly-valued secretary of a political secretary and had secretaries under her? The faces came and went, as though in a dream, all animated, all inscrutable.

  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 undifferentiated – yet nondescripts, thought Harriet, were the most difficult of all human beings to analyse. You scarcely knew they were t
here, 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 Phœbe’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 Phœbe 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 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.