Gaudy Night (45 page)

“Do you think so?” Harriet shook her head. “Ye’ll no fickle Tammas Yownie:”

It may, perhaps, be embarrassing for a solitary man to walk across a wide quadrangle under a fire of glances from a collection of collegiate females, but it is child’s play compared, for example, with the long trek from the pavilion at Lord’s to the far end of the pitch, with five wickets down and ninety needed to save the follow-on. Thousands of people then alive might have recognised that easy and unhurried stride and confident carriage of the head. Harriet let him do three-quarters of the journey alone, and then advanced to meet him.

“Have you cleaned your teeth and said your prayers?”

“Yes, mamma; and cut my nails and washed behind the ears and got a clean handkerchief.”

Looking at a bunch of students who happened to pass at the moment, Harriet wished she could have said the same of them. They were grubby and dishevelled and she felt unexpectedly obliged to Miss Shaw for having made an effort in the matter of dress. As for her convoy, from his sleek yellow head to his pumps she distrusted him; his mood of the morning was gone, and he was as ready for mischief as a wilderness of monkeys.

“Come along, then, and behave prettily. Have you seen your nephew?”

“I have seen him. My bankruptcy will probably be announced tomorrow. He asked me to give you his love, no doubt thinking I can still be lavish in that commodity. It all returned from him to you, though it was mine before. That colour is very becoming to you.”

His tone was pleasantly detached and she hoped he was referring to her dress; but she was not sure. She was glad to relinquish him to the Dean, who came forward to claim him and to relieve her of the introductions. Harriet watched in some amusement. Miss Lydgate, far too unselfconscious to have any attitude at all, greeted him exactly as she would have greeted anybody else, and asked eagerly about the situation in Central Europe; Miss Shaw smiled with a graciousness that emphasised Miss Stevens’s brusque “How-d’ye-do” and immediate retreat into animated discussion of college affairs with Miss Allison; Miss Pyke pounced on him with an intelligent question about the latest murder; Miss Barton, advancing with an evident determination to put him right about capital punishment, was disarmed by the blank amiability of the countenance offered for her inspection and observed instead that it had been a remarkably fine day.

“Comedian!” thought Harriet, as Miss Barton, finding she could make. nothing of him, passed him on to Miss Hillyard.

“Ah,” said Wimsey instantly, smiling into the History Tutor’s sulky eyes, “this is delightful. Your paper in the
Historical Review
on the diplomatic aspects of the Divorce...”

(Heavens! thought Harriet, I hope he knows his stuff.)

“... really masterly. Indeed, I felt that, if anything, you had slightly underestimated the pressure brought to bear upon Clement by...”

“... consulted the unedited dispatches in the possession of...”

“... you might have carried the argument a trifle further. You very rightly point out that the Emperor...”

(Yes; he had read the article all right.)

“… disfigured by prejudice, but a considerable authority on the Canon Law...”

“... needing to be thoroughly overhauled and re-edited. Innumerable mistranscriptions and at least one unscrupulous omission....”

“…If at any time you require access, I could probably put you into touch... official channels... personal introduction... raise no difficulties...”

“Miss Hillyard,” said the Dean to Harriet, “looks as though she had been given a birthday present.”

“I think he’s offering her access to some out-of-the-way source of information.” (After all, she thought, he is Somebody, though one never seems able to remember it.)

“… not so much political as economic.”

“Ah!” said Miss Hillyard, “when it comes to a question of national finance Miss de Vine is the real authority.”

She effected the introduction herself, and the discussion continued.

“Well,” said the Dean, “he has made a complete conquest of Miss Hillyard.”

“And Miss de Vine is making a complete conquest of him.”

“It’s mutual, I fancy. At any rate, her back hair’s coming down, which is a sure sign of pleasure and excitement.”

“Yes,” said Harriet. Wimsey was arguing with intelligence about the appropriation of monastic funds, but she had little doubt that the back of his mind was full of hairpins.

“Here comes the Warden. We shall have to separate them forcibly. He’s
got
to face Dr. Baring and take her in to dinner.... All’s well. She has collared him. That firm assertion of the Royal Prerogative!... Do you want to sit next him and hold his hand?”

“I don’t think he needs any assistance from me. You’re the person for him. Not a suspect, but full of lively information.”

“All right; I’ll go and prattle to him. You’d better sit opposite to us and kick me if I say anything indiscreet.”

By this arrangement, Harriet found herself placed a little uncomfortably between Miss Hillyard (in whom she always felt an antagonism to herself) and Miss Barton (who was obviously still worried about Wimsey’s detective hobbies), and face to face with the two people whose glances were most likely to disturb her gravity. On the other side of the Dean sat Miss Pyke; on the other side of Miss Hillyard was Miss de Vine, well under Wimsey’s eye. Miss Lydgate, that secure fortress, was situated at the far end of the table, offering no kind of refuge.

Neither Miss Hillyard nor Miss Barton had much to say to Harriet, who was thus able to follow, without too much difficulty, the Warden’s straightforward determination to size up Wimsey and Wimsey’s diplomatically veiled but equally obstinate determination to size up the Warden; a contest carried on with unwavering courtesy on either side.

Dr. Baring began by inquiring whether Lord Peter had been conducted over the College and what he thought of it, adding, with due modesty, that architecturally, of course, it could scarcely hope to compete with the more ancient foundations.

“Considering,” said his lordship plaintively, “that the architecture of my own ancient foundation is mathematically compounded of ambition, distraction, uglification and derision, that remark sounds like sarcasm.”

The Warden, almost seduced into believing herself guilty of a breach of manners, earnestly assured him that she had intended no personal allusion.

“An occasional reminder is good for us,” said he. “We are mortified in nineteenth-century Gothic, lest in our overweening Balliolity we forget God. We pulled down the good to make way for the bad; you, on the contrary, have made the world out of nothing—a more divine procedure.”

The Warden, manoeuvring uneasily on this slippery ground between jest and earnest, found foothold:

“It is quite true that we have had to make what we can out of very little—and that, you know, is typical of our whole position here.”

“Yes; you are practically without endowments?”

The question was so offered as to include the Dean, who said cheerfully: “Quite right. All done by cheeseparing.”

“That being so,” he said, seriously, “even to admire seems to be a kind of impertinence. This is a very fine hall—who is the architect?”

The Warden supplied him with a little local history, breaking off to say: “But probably you are not specially interested in all this question of women’s education.”

“Is it still a question? It ought not to be. I hope you are not going to ask me whether I approve of women’s doing this and that.”

“Why not?”

“You should not imply that I have any right either to approve or disapprove.”

“I assure you,” said the Warden, “that even in Oxford we still encounter a certain number of people who maintain their right to disapprove.”

“And I had hoped I was returning to civilisation.”

The removal of fish-plates caused a slight diversion, and the Warden took the opportunity to turn her inquiries upon the situation in Europe. Here the guest was on his own ground. Harriet caught the Dean’s eye and smiled. But the more formidable challenge was coming. International politics led to history, and history—in Dr. Baring’s mind—to philosophy. The ominous name of Plato suddenly emerged from a tangle of words, and Dr. Baring moved out a philosophical speculation, like a pawn, and planted it temptingly
en prise.

Many persons had plunged to irretrievable disaster over the Warden’s philosophic pawn. There were two ways of taking it: both disastrous. One was to pretend to knowledge; the other, to profess an insincere eagerness for instruction. His lordship smiled gently and refused the gambit:

“That is out of my stars. I have not the philosophic mind.”

“And how would you define the philosophic mind, Lord Peter?”

“I wouldn’t, definitions are dangerous. But I know that philosophy is a closed book to me, as music is to the tone-deaf.”

The Warden looked at him quickly; he presented her with an innocent profile, drooping and contemplative over his plate, like a heron brooding by a pond.

“A very apt illustration,” said the Warden; “as it happens, I am tone-deaf myself.”

“Are you? I thought you might be,” he said, equably.

“That is very interesting. How can you tell?”

“There is something in the quality of the voice.” He offered candid grey eyes for examination. But it’s not a very safe conclusion to draw, and, as you may have noticed, I didn’t draw it. That is the art of the charlatan—to induce a confession and present it as the result of deduction.”

“I see,” said Dr. Baring. “You expose your technique very frankly.”

“You would have seen through it in any case, so it is better to expose one’s self and acquire an unmerited reputation for candour. The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it—that is at the bottom of the
pseude legein hos dei.
”

“So there is one philosopher whose books are not closed to you? Next time, I will start by way of Aristotle.”

She turned to her left-hand neighbour and released him.

“I am sorry,” said the Dean, “we have no strong drink to offer you.” His face was eloquent of mingled apprehension and mischief.

“The toad beneath the harrow knows where every separate tooth-point goes. Do you always prove your guests with hard questions?”

“Till they show themselves to be Solomons. You have passed the test with great credit.”

“Hush! there is only one kind of wisdom that has any social value, and that is the knowledge of one’s own limitations.”

“Nervous young dons and students have before now been carried out in convulsions through being afraid to say boldly that they did not know.”

“Showing themselves,” said Miss Pyke across the Dean, “less wise than Socrates, who made the admission fairly frequently.”

“For Heaven’s sake,” said Wimsey, “don’t mention Socrates. It might start all over again.”

“Not now,” said the Dean. “She will ask no questions now except for instruction.”

“There is a question on which I am anxious to be instructed,” said Miss Pyke, “if you will not take it amiss.”

Miss Pyke, of course, was still worried about Dr. Threep’s shirt-front, and determined on getting enlightenment. Harriet hoped that Wimsey would recognise her curiosity for what it was: not skittishness, but the embarrassing appetite for exact information which characterises the scholarly mind.

“That phenomenon,” he said, readily, “comes within my own sphere of knowledge. It occurs because the human torso possesses a higher factor of variability than the ready-made shirt. The explosive sound you mention is produced when the shirt-front is slightly too long for the wearer. The stiff edges, being forced slightly apart by the inclination of the body, come back into contact with a sharp click, similar to that emitted by the elytra of certain beetles. It is not to be confused, however, with the ticking of the Death-watch, which is made by tapping with the jaws and is held to be a love-call. The clicking of the shirt-front has no amatory significance, and is, indeed, an embarrassment to the insect. It may be obviated by an increased care in selection or, in extreme cases, by having the garment made to measure.”

“Thank you so much,” said Miss Pyke. “That is a most satisfactory explanation. At this time of day, it is perhaps not improper to adduce the parallel instance of the old-fashioned corset, which was subject to a similar inconvenience.”

“The inconvenience,” added Wimsey, “was even greater in the case of plate armour, which had to be very well tailored to allow of movement at all.”

At this point, Miss Barton captured Harriet’s attention with some remark or other, and she lost track of the conversation on the other side of the table. When she picked up the threads again, Miss Pyke was giving her neighbours some curious details about Ancient Minoan civilisation, and the Warden was apparently waiting till she had finished to pounce on Peter again. Turning to her right, Harriet saw that Miss Hillyard was watching the group with a curiously concentrated expression. Harriet asked her to pass the sugar, and she came back to earth with a slight start.

“They seem to be getting on very well over there,” said Harriet.

“Miss Pyke likes an audience,” said Miss Hillyard, with so much venom that Harriet was quite astonished.

“It’s good for a man to have to do the listening sometimes,” she suggested.

Miss Hillyard agreed absently. After a slight pause, during which dinner proceeded without incident, she said:

“Your friend tells me he can obtain access for me to some private collections of historical documents in Florence. Do you suppose he means what he says?”

“If he says so, you may be sure he can and will.”

“That is a testimonial,” said Miss Hillyard. “I am very glad to hear it.”

Meanwhile, the Warden had effected her capture, and was talking to Peter in a low tone and with some earnestness. He listened attentively, while he peeled an apple, the narrow coils of the rind sliding slowly over his fingers. She concluded with some question; and he shook his head.

“It is very unlikely. I should say there was no hope of it at all.”