Gaudy Night (25 page)

“But suppose one doesn’t quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose,” said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, “suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?”

“You can usually tell,” said Miss de Vine, “by seeing what kind of mistakes you make. I’m quite sure that one never makes
fundamental
mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that is.”

“I made a very big mistake once,” said Harriet, “as I expect you know. I don’t think that arose out of lack of interest. It seemed at the time the most important thing in the world.”

“And yet you made the mistake. Were you really giving all your mind to it, do you think? Your
mind?
Were you really being as cautious and exacting about it as you would be about writing a passage of fine prose?”

“That’s rather a difficult sort of comparison. One can t, surely, deal with emotional excitements in that detached spirit.”

“Isn’t the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?”

“Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it’s dead right, there’s no excitement like it. It’s marvellous. It makes you feel like God on the Seventh Day—for a bit, anyhow.”

“Well, that’s what I mean. You expend the trouble and you don’t make any mistake—and
then
you experience the ecstasy. But if there’s any subject in which you’re content with the second-rate, then it isn’t really your subject.”

“You’re dead right,” said Harriet, after a pause. “If one’s genuinely interested one knows how to be patient, and let time pass, as Queen Elizabeth said. Perhaps that’s the meaning of the phrase about genius being eternal patience, which I always thought rather absurd. If you truly want a thing, you don’t snatch; if you snatch, you don’t really want it. Do you suppose that, if you find yourself taking pains about a thing, it’s a proof of its importance to you?”

“I think it is, to a large extent. But the big proof is that the thing comes right, without those fundamental errors. One always makes surface errors, of course. But a fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring. I wish one could teach people nowadays that the doctrine of snatching what one thinks one wants is unsound.”

“I saw six plays this winter in London,” said Harriet, “all preaching the doctrine of snatch. I agree that they left me with the feeling that none of the characters knew what they wanted.”

“No,” said Miss de Vine. “If you are once sure what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller—all other interests, your own and other people’s. Miss Lydgate wouldn’t like my saying that, but it’s as true of her as of anybody else. She’s the kindest soul in the world, in things she’s indifferent about, like the peculations of Jukes. But she hasn’t the slightest mercy on the prosodical theories of Mr. Elkbottom. She wouldn’t countenance those to save Mr. Elkbottom from hanging. She’d say she couldn’t. And she couldn’t, of course. If she actually saw Mr. Elkbottom writhing in humiliation, she’d be sorry but she wouldn’t alter a paragraph. That would be treason. One can’t be pitiful where one’s own job is concerned. You’d lie cheerfully, I expect, about anything except—what?”

“Oh, anything!” said Harriet, laughing. “Except saying that somebody’s beastly book is good when it isn’t. I can’t do that. It makes me a lot of enemies, but I can’t do it.”

“No, one can’t,” said Miss de Vine. “However painful it is, there’s always one thing one has to deal with sincerely, if there’s any root to one’s mind at all. I ought to know, from my own experience. Of course, the one thing may be an emotional thing; I don’t say it mayn’t. One may commit all the sins in the calendar, and still be faithful and honest towards one person. If so, then that one person is probably one’s appointed job. I’m not despising that kind of loyalty; it doesn’t happen to be mine, that is all.”

“Did you discover that by making a fundamental mistake?” asked Harriet, a little nervously.

“Yes,” said Miss de Vine. “I once got engaged to somebody. But I found I as always blundering—hurting his feelings, doing stupid things, making quite elementary mistakes about him. In the end I realised that I simply wasn’t taking as much trouble with him as I should have done over a disputed reading. So I decided he wasn’t my job.” She smiled. “For all that, I was fonder of him than he was of me. He married an excellent woman who is devoted to him and does make him her job. I should think he was a full-time job. He is a painter and usually on the verge of bankruptcy; but he paints very well.”

“I suppose one oughtn’t to marry anybody, unless one’s prepared to make him a full-time job.”

“Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don’t took on themselves as jobs but as fellow-creatures.”

“I should think Phoebe Tucker and her husband were like that,” said Harriet. “You met her at the Gaudy. That collaboration seems to work. But what with the wives who are jealous of their husbands’ work and the husbands who are jealous of their wives’ interests, it looks as though most of us imagined ourselves to be jobs.”

“The worst of being a job,” said Miss de Vine, “is the devastating effect it has on one’s character. I’m very sorry for the person who is somebody else’s job; he (or she, of course) ends by devouring or being devoured, either of which is bad for one. My painter has devoured his wife, though neither of them knows it; and poor Miss Cattermole is in great danger of being identified with her parents’ job and being devoured.”

“Then you’re all for the impersonal job?”

“I am,” said Miss de Vine.

“But you say you don’t despise those who make some other person their job?”

“Far from despising them,” said Miss de Vine; “I think they are dangerous.”

Christ Church,

Friday.

Dear Miss Vane,

If you can forgive my idiotic behaviour the other day, will you come and lunch with me on Monday at 1 o’clock? Please do. I am still feeling suicidal, so it would really be a work of charity all round. I hope the meringues got home safely.

Very sincerely yours,

SAINT-GEORGE

My dear young man, thought Harriet, as she wrote an acceptance of this naïve invitation, if you think I can’t see through that, you’re mightily mistaken. This is not for me, but for
les beaux yeux de la cassette de l’oncle Pierre.
But there are worse meals than those that come out of the House kitchen, and I will go. I should like to know how much money you’re managing to get through, by the way. The heir of Denver should be rich enough in his own right without appealing to Uncle Peter. Gracious! when I think that I was given my college fees and my clothes and five pounds a term to make whoopee on! You won’t get much sympathy or support from me, my lord.

Still in this severe mood, she drove down St. Aldate’s on Monday and inquired of the porter beneath Tom Tower for Lord Saint-George; only to be told that Lord Saint-George was not in College.

“Oh!” said Harriet, disconcerted, “but he asked me to lunch.”

“What a pity you weren’t let know, miss. Lord Saint-George was in a nasty motor-accident on Friday night. He’s in the Infirmary. Didn’t you see it in the papers?”

“No, I missed it. Is he badly hurt?”

“Injured his shoulder and cut his head open pretty badly, so we hear,” said the porter, with regret, and yet with a slight relish at the imparting of bad news. “He was unconscious for twenty-four hours; but we are informed that his condition is now improving. The Duke and Duchess have left for the country again.”

“Dear me!” said Harriet. “I’m very sorry to hear this. I’d better go-round and inquire. Do you know whether he is allowed to see anybody yet?” The porter looked her over with a paternal eye, which somehow suggested to her that if she had been an undergraduate the answer would have been No. “I believe, miss,” said the porter, “that Mr. Danvers and Lord Warboys were permitted to visit his lordship this morning. I couldn’t say further than that. Excuse me—there is Mr. Danvers just crossing the quadrangle. I will ascertain.”

He emerged from his glass case and pursued Mr. Danvers, who immediately came running to the lodge.

“I say,” said Mr. Danvers, “are you Miss Vane? Because poor old Saint-George has only just remembered about you. He’s terribly sorry, and I was to catch you and give you some grub. No trouble at all—a great pleasure. We ought to have let you know, but he was knocked clean out, poor old chap. And then, what with the family fussing round—do you know the Duchess?—No?—Ah! Well, she went off this morning, and then I was allowed to go round and got my instructions. Terrific apologies and all that.”

“How did it happen?”

“Driving a racing car to the danger of the public,” said Mr. Danvers, with a grimace. “Trying to make it before the gates were shut. No police on the spot, as it happened, so we don’t know exactly what
did
happen. Nobody killed, fortunately. Saint-George took a telegraph-pole in his stride, apparently, went out head first and pitched on his shoulder. Lucky he had the windscreen down, or he’d have had no face to speak of. The car’s a total wreck, and I don’t know why he isn’t. But all those Wimseys have as many lives as cats. Come along in. These are my rooms. I hope you can eat the usual lamb cutlets—there wasn’t time to think up anything special. But I had particular orders to hunt out Saint-George’s Niersteiner ’23 and mention Uncle Peter in connection with it. Is that right? I don’t know whether Uncle Peter bought it or recommended it or merely enjoyed it, or what he had to do with it, but that’s what I was told to say.”

Harriet laughed. “If he did any of those things, it’ll be all right.”

The Niersteiner was excellent, and Harriet heartlessly enjoyed her lunch, finding Mr. Danvers a pleasant host.

“And do go up and see the patient,” said Mr. Danvers, as he escorted her at length to the gate. “He’s quite fit to receive company, and it’ll cheer him up no end. He’s in a private ward, so you can get in any time.”

“I’ll go straight away,” said Harriet.

“Do,” said Mr. Danvers. “What’s that?” he added, turning to the porter, who had come out with a letter in his hand. “Oh, something for Saint George. Right. Yes. I expect the lady will take it up, if she’s going now. If not, it can wait for the messenger.”

Harriet looked at the superscription. “The Viscount Saint-George, Christ Church, Oxford, Inghilterra.” Even without the Italian stamp, there was no mistaking where that came from. “I’ll take it,” she said—“it might be urgent.”

Lord Saint-George, with his right arm in a sling, his forehead and one eye obscured by bandages and the other eye black and bloodshot, was profuse in welcome and apology.

“I hope Danvers looked after you all right. It’s frightfully decent of you to come along.”

Harriet asked if he was badly hurt.

“Well, it might be worse. I fancy Uncle Peter had a near squeak of it this time, but it’s worked out at a cut head and a busted shoulder. And shock and bruises and all that. Much less than I deserve. Stay and talk to me. It’s dashed dull being all alone, and I’ve only got one eye and can’t see out of that.”

“Won’t talking make your head ache?”

“It can’t ache worse than it does already. And you’ve got a nice voice. Do be kind and stay.”

“I’ve brought a letter along for you from College.”

“Some dashed dun or other, I suppose.”

“No. It’s from Rome.”

“Uncle Peter. Oh, my God! I suppose I’d better know the worst.”

She put it into his left hand, and watched his fingers fumble across the broad red seal.

“Ugh! Sealing-wax and the family crest. I know what that means. Uncle Peter at his stuffiest.”

He struggled impatiently with the tough envelope.

“Shall I open it for you”?”

“I wish you would. And, look here—be an angel and read it to me. Even with two good eyes, his fist’s a bit of a strain.”

Harriet drew out the letter and glanced at the opening words.

“This looks rather private.”

“Better you than the nurse. Besides, I can bear it better with a spot of womanly sympathy. I say, is there any enclosure?”

“No enclosure. No.”

The patient groaned.

“Uncle Peter turns to bay. That’s torn it. How does it start? If it’s ‘Gherkins’ or ‘Jerry,’ or even ‘Gerald,’ there’s hope yet.”

“It starts, ‘My dear Saint-George.’”

“Oh, gosh! Then he’s really furious. And signed with all the initials he can rake up, what?”

Harriet turned the letter over.

“Signed with all his names in full.”

“Unrelenting monster! You know, I had a sort of feeling he wouldn’t take it very well. I don’t know what the devil I’m going to do now.”

He looked so ill that Harriet said, rather anxiously:

“Hadn’t we better leave it till tomorrow?”

“No. I must know where I stand. Carry on. Speak gently to your little boy. Sing it to me. It’ll need it.”

My dear Saint-George,

If I have rightly understood your rather incoherent statement of your affairs, you have contracted a debt of honour for a sum which you do not possess. You have settled it with a cheque which you had no money to meet. As cover for this, you have borrowed from a friend, giving him a post-dated cheque which you have no reason to suppose will be met either. You suggest that I should accommodate you by backing your bill at six months; failing which, you will either (a) “try Levy again,” or (b) blow your brains out. The former alternative would, as you admit, increase your ultimate liability; the second, as I will myself venture to point out, would not reimburse your friend but merely add disgrace to insolvency.

Lord Saint-George shifted restlessly upon his pillows. “Nasty clear-headed way he has of putting things.”

You are good enough to say that you approach me rather than your father, because I am, in your opinion, more likely to be sympathetic to this dubious piece of finance. I cannot say I feel flattered by your opinion.

“I didn’t mean that, exactly,” groaned the viscount. “He knows quite well what I mean. The Governor would fly right off the handle. Damn it, it’s his own fault! He oughtn’t to keep me so short. What does he expect? Considering the money
he
got through in his giddy youth, he should know something about it. And Uncle Peter’s rolling—it wouldn’t hurt him to cough up a bit.”