Gaudy Night (28 page)

The feeling in the Senior Common Room after this episode underwent subtle alteration. Tongues were sharpened; the veneer of detachment began to wear thin; the uneasiness of suspicion began to make itself felt; only Miss Lydgate and the Dean, being proved innocent, remained unmoved.

“Your bad luck seems to have repeated itself, Miss Barton,” observed Miss Pyke, acidly. “Both in the Library affair and in this last outbreak, you seem to have been first on the spot and yet unhappily prevented from securing the culprit.”

“Yes,” said Miss Barton. “It’s very unfortunate. If next time my gown gets taken as well, the College sleuth will begin to smell a rat.”

“Very trying for you, Mrs. Goodwin,” said Miss Hillyard, “to come back to all this upset, just when you needed a rest. I trust your little boy is better. It is particularly tiresome, because all the time you were away we had no disturbance at all.”

“It’s most annoying,” said Mrs. Goodwin. “The poor creature who does these things must be quite demented. Of course these disorders do tend to occur in celibate, or chiefly celibate communities. It is a kind of compensation, I suppose, for the lack of other excitements.”

“The great mistake,” said Miss Burrows, “was, of course, our not keeping together. Naturally I wanted to see if any damage had been done in the Library—but why so many people should have come pelting after me—”

“The Hall was my concern,” said the Bursar.

“Oh! you
did
get to the Hall? I completely lost sight of you in the quad.”

“That,” said Miss Hillyard, “was exactly the catastrophe I was trying to avoid when I pursued you. I called loudly to you to stop. You must have heard me.”

“There was too much noise to hear anything,” said Miss Stevens.

“I came to Miss Lydgate’s room,” said Miss Shaw, “the moment I could get dressed, understanding that everybody was to be there. But there was really nobody. I thought I must have misunderstood, so I tried to find Miss Vane, but she seemed to have gone off into the Ewigkeit.”

“It must have taken you a remarkably long time to dress,” said Miss Burrows. “Anybody could run three times round College in the time it takes you to pull your stockings on.”

“Somebody,” said Miss Shaw, “apparently
did.
”

“They’re beginning to get fractious,” said Harriet to the Dean.

“What can you expect? The silly cuckoos! If they’d
only
sat tight on their little behinds last night, we could have cleared the whole business up. It’s not
your
fault. You couldn’t be everywhere at once.
How
we can expect discipline from the students, when a whole bunch of middle-aged seniors behave like a flock of
hens
in a crisis, I can’t think. Who’s that out there, conducting that strident conversation with a top window? Oh! I think it’s Baker’s young man. Well, discipline must be observed, I suppose. Give me the house telephone, would you? Thanks. I don’t see how we’re to prevent this last outbreak from getting—Oh! Martha! The Dean’s compliments, if you please, to Miss Baker, and will she kindly bear in mind the rule about morning visitors.—And the students are getting rather annoyed about the destruction of their property. I think they’re actually getting worked up to calling a J.C.R. meeting, and it’s unfair on them, poor lambs, to let them go on suspecting one another, hut what can we do about it? Thank God, it’s the last week of term! I suppose we’re not making a ghastly mistake? It must be one of us, and not a student or a scout.”

“We seem to have eliminated the students—unless it’s a conspiracy between two of them. It might be that. Hudson and Cattermole together. But as for the scouts—I can show you this, now, I suppose. Would any of the scouts quote Virgil?”

“No, said the Dean, examining the “Harpy” passage. “No; it doesn’t seem likely. Oh, dear!”

The reply to Harriet’s letter arrived by return.

My dear Harriet,

It is exceedingly good of you to be bothered with my graceless nephew. I am afraid the episode must have left you with an unfortunate impression of both of us.

I am very fond of the boy, and he is, as you say, attractive; but he is rather easily led, and my brother is not, in my opinion, handling him in the wisest way. Considering his expectations, Gerald is kept absurdly short of money, and naturally he feels he has a right to anything he can lay hands on. Still, he must learn to draw the line between carelessness and dishonesty. I have offered to augment his allowance myself, but the suggestion was not well received at home. His parents, I know, feel that I am stealing his confidence from them; but if I refused to help him, he would go elsewhere and get himself into worse trouble. Though I do not like the position into which I am forced of “Codlin is the friend, not Short,” I still think it better that he should turn to me than to an outsider. I call this family pride; it may be mere vanity; I know it is vexation of spirit.

Let me assure you that so far, when I have trusted Gerald with anything, he has not let me down. He is amenable to some of the shibboleths. But he is not amenable to a discipline of alternate indulgence and severity; and indeed I do not know who is.

I must again apologise for troubling you with our family affairs. What on earth are you doing in Oxford? Have you retired from the world to pursue the contemplative life? I will not attempt to dissuade you now, but shall address you on the subject in the usual form on the 1st April next.

Yours in all gratitude,

P.D.B.W.

I had forgotten to say, thank you for telling me about the accident and reassuring me as to its results. It was the first I had heard of it—as old James Forsyte says, “Nobody ever tells me anything.” I will oblige with a few kind words.

“Poor old Peter!” said Harriet.

The remark probably deserves to be included in an anthology of Great First Occasions.

Lord Saint-George, when she went to pay him a parting visit, was considerably improved in appearance; but his expression was worried. His bed strewn with untidy papers, he seemed to be trying to cope with his affairs and to be making but heavy weather of it. He brightened up considerably at sight o Harriet.

“Oh, look! You’re just the person I’ve been praying for. I’ve no head for this kind of thing, and all the beastly bills keep sliding off the bed. I can write my name pretty well, but I can’t keep track of things. I’m sure I’ve paid some of these brutes twice over.”

“Let me help; can I?”

“I hoped you’d say that. It’s so nice of you to spoil me, isn’t it? I can’t think how things mount up so. They rook one shockingly at these places. But one must have something to eat, mustn’t one? And belong to a few clubs. And play a game or two. Of course polo comes a bit expensive, but it’s rather done just now. It’s nothing, really. Of course, the mistake was going round with that bunch in Town last vac. Mother imagines they’re O.K. because they’re in the studbook, but they’re pretty hot, really. She’ll be no end surprised if they end up in gaol, and her white-headed boy with them. Sad degeneracy of old landed families, and that kind of thing. Solemn rebuke by learned judge. I somehow got behind-hand with things about the New Year, and never caught up again. It looks to me as though Uncle Peter was going to get a bit of a shock. He’s written, by the way. Much more like himself.”

He tossed the letter over.

Dear Jerry,

Of all the thundering nuisances that ever embittered the lives of their long-suffering relatives, you are the worst. For God’s sake put down that racing car before you kill yourself; strange as it may appear, I still retain some lingering remnants of affection for you. I hope they take your licence away for life, and I hope you feel like hell. You probably do. Don’t worry any more about the money.

I am writing to thank Miss Vane for her kindness to you. She is a person whose good opinion I value, so be merciful to my feelings as a man and an uncle.

Bunter has just found three silver threads among the gold. He is incredibly shocked. He begs to tender you his respectful commiseration, and advises scalp-massage (for me, I mean).

When you can manage it, send a line to report progress to your querulous and rapidly-decaying uncle,

P.W.

“He’ll get a whole crop of silver threads when he realises that I hadn’t paid up the insurance,” said the viscount, callously, as he took the letter back.

“What!”

“Fortunately there was nobody else involved, and the police weren’t on the spot. But I suppose I shall hear from the Post Office about their blasted telegraph pole. If I have to go before the magistrates and the Governor hears of it, he’ll be annoyed. It’ll cost a bit to get the car put right. I’d throw the damned thing away, only Dad gave it to me in one of his generous fits. And of course, about the first thing he asked when I came out from under was whether the insurance was all right. And being in no state to argue, I said Yes. If only it doesn’t get into the papers about the insurance, we’re all right—only the repairs will make a nice little item in Uncle Peter’s total.”

“Is it fair to make him pay for that?”

“Damned unfair,” said Lord Saint-George, cheerfully. “The Governor ought to pay the insurance himself. He’s like the Old Man of Thermopylae—never does anything properly. If you come to that, it isn’t fair to make Uncle Peter pay for all the horses that fall down when one backs them. Or for all the rotten little gold-diggers one carts round either—I shall have to lump
them
together under ‘Sundries.’ And he’ll say, ‘Ah, yes! Postage stamps, telephone calls, and live wires.’ And then I shall lose my head and say, ‘Well Uncle—’ I hate those sentences that start with ‘Well, Uncle.’ They always seem to go on and on and lead anywhere.”

“I don’t suppose he’ll ask for details, if you don’t volunteer them. Look! I’ve got all these bills sorted. Shall I write out the cheques for you to sign?”

“I wish you would. No, he won’t ask. He’ll only sit looking harmless till I tell him. I suppose that’s the way he gets criminals to come across with it. It’s not a nice characteristic. Have you got that note from Levy? That’s the main thing. And there’s a letter from a chap called Cartwright that’s rather important. I borrowed a bit from him up in Town once or twice. What’s he make it come to?... Oh, rot! It can’t be as much as that... Let’s see... Well, I suppose he’s right... And Archie Campbell—he’s my bookmaker—God! what a lot of screws! they oughtn’t to allow the poor beasts out. And the odds-and-ends here? What a marvellously neat way you have with these things, haven’t you? Shall we tot them all up and see where we get to? Then if I faint, you can ring the bell for Nurse.”

“I’m not very good at arithmetic. You’d better check this up. It looks a bit unlikely, but I can’t make it come any less.”

“Add on, say a hundred and fifty, estimated repairs to car, and then we’ll see. Oh, hell! what have we here?”

“The portrait of a blinking idiot,” said Harriet, irresistibly.

“Amazing fellow, Shakespeare. The apt word for all occasions. Yes; there’s a ‘Well, Uncle’ look about this, all right. Of course, I get my quarter’s allowance at the end of the month, but there’s the vac. to get through and all next term. One thing, I’ll have to go home and be good; can’t get about the place much like this. The Governor more or less hinted that I ought to pay my own doctor’s bill, but I wasn’t taking the hint. Mother blames Uncle Peter for the whole thing.”

“Why on earth?”

“Setting me a bad example of furious driving. He is a bit hot, of course, but he never seems to get my foul luck.”

“Can he possibly be a better driver?”

“Darling Harriet, that’s unkind. You don’t mind my calling you Harriet?”

“As a matter of fact, I do, rather.”

“But I can’t keep on saying ‘Miss Vane’ to a person who knows all my hideous secrets. Perhaps I’d better accustom myself to saying ‘Aunt Harriet’. What’s wrong with that? You simply can’t refuse to be an adopted aunt to me. My Aunt Mary has gone all domestic and hasn’t time for me, and my mother’s sisters are the original gorgons. I’m dreadfully unappreciated and quite auntless for all practical purposes.”

“You deserve neither aunts nor uncles, considering how you treat them. Do you mean to finish these cheques today? Because, if not, I have other things to do.”

“Very well. We will continue to rob Peter to pay all. It’s wonderful what a good influence you have over me. Unbending devotion to duty. If you’d only take me in hand I might turn out quite well after all.”

“Sign, please.”

“But you don’t seem very susceptible. Poor Uncle Peter!”

“It will be poor Uncle Peter by the time you’ve finished.”

“That’s what I mean. Fifty-three, nineteen, four—it’s shocking the way other people smoke one’s fags, and I’m sure my scout bags half of them Twenty-six, twelve, eight. Nineteen, seven, two. A hundred quid gone before you’ve time to look at it. Thirty-one, fourteen. Twelve, nine, six. Five, fifteen three. What’s all this tale about ghosts playing merry hell in Shrewsbury?”

Harriet jumped. “Damn! which of our little beasts told you about that?”

“None of ’em told
me.
I don’t encourage women students. Nice girls no doubt, but too grubby. There’s a chap on my staircase who came up today with a story....I forget, he told me not to mention it. What’s it all about? and why the hush-hush?”

“Oh, dear! and they were implored not to talk. They never think of the harm this kind of thing does to the College.”

“Well, but it’s only a rag, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid it’s a bit more than that. Look here, if I tell you why it’s hush-hush, will you promise not to pass it on?”

“Well,” said Lord Saint-George, candidly, “you know how my tongue runs away with me. I’m not very dependable.”

“Your uncle says you are.”

“Uncle Peter? Good lord! he must be potty. Sad to see a fine brain going to rack and ruin. Of course, he’s not as young as he was.... You’re looking very sober about it.”

“It is rather grim, really. We’re afraid the trouble’s caused by somebody who’s not quite right in her head. Not a student—but of course we can’t very well tell the students that, especially when we don’t know who it is.”