Gaudy Night

CHAPTER 1-2

Once bathed, Harriet felt better. She was lucky again in returning to her room to meet no one whom she knew. She was in no mood for reminiscent gossipings in dressing-gowns. She saw the name ‘Mrs. H. Attwood’ on the door next but one to hers. The door was shut, and she was grateful. The next door bore no name, but as she went by, someone turned the handle from within, and it began to open slowly. Harriet leapt quickly past it and into shelter. She found her heart beating absurdly fast.

The black frock fitted her like a glove. It was made with a small square yoke and long, close sleeves, softened by a wrist-frill falling nearly to the knuckles. It outlined her figure to the waist and fell full-skirted to the ground, with a suggestion of the mediæval robe. Its dull surface effaced itself, not outshining the dull gleam of the academic poplin. She pulled the gown’s heavy folds forward upon her shoulders, so that the straight fronts fell stole-wise, serene. The hood cost her a small struggle, before she remembered the right twist at the throat which turned the bright silk outwards. She pinned it invisibly on her breast, so that it sat poised and balanced—one black shoulder and one crimson. Standing and stooping before the inadequate looking-glass (the present student who owned the room was obviously a very short woman), she adjusted the soft cap to lie flat and straight, peak down in the centre of the forehead. The glass showed her her own face, rather pale, with black brows fronting squarely either side of a strong nose, a little too broad for beauty. Her own eyes looked back at her—rather tired, rather defiant—eyes that had looked upon fear and were still wary. The mouth was the mouth of one who has been generous and repented of generosity; its wide corners were tucked back to give nothing away. With the thick, waving hair folded beneath the black cloth, the face seemed somehow stripped for action. She frowned at herself and moved her hands a little up and down upon the stuff of her gown; then, becoming impatient with the looking-glass, she turned to the window, which looked out into the Inner or Old Quad. This indeed, was less a quad than an oblong garden, with the college buildings grouped about it. At one end, tables and chairs were set out upon the grass beneath the shade of the trees. At the far side, the new Library wing, now almost complete, showed its bare rafters in a forest of scaffolding. A few groups of women crossed the lawn; Harriet observed with irritation that most of them wore their caps badly, and one had had the folly to put on a pale lemon frock with muslin frills, which looked incongruous beneath a gown.

‘Though, after all,’ she thought, ‘the bright colours are mediæval enough. And at any rate, the women are no worse than the men. I once saw old Hammond walk in the Encænia procession in a Mus. Doc. gown, a grey flannel suit, brown boots and a blue spotted tie, and nobody said anything to him.’

She laughed suddenly, and for the first time felt confident.

‘They can’t take this away, at any rate. Whatever I may have done since, this remains. Scholar; Master of Arts; Domina; Senior Member of this University (statutum est quod Juniories Senioribus debitam et congruam reverentiam tum in privato tum in publico exhibeant); a place achieved, inalienable, worthy of reverence.’

She walked firmly from the room and knocked upon the door next but one to her own.

* * * *

The four women walked down to the garden together—slowly, because Mary was ill and could not move fast. And as they went, Harriet was thinking:

‘It’s a mistake—it’s a great mistake—I shouldn’t have come. Mary is a dear, as she always was, and she is pathetically pleased to see me, but we have nothing to say to one another. And I shall always remember her, now, as she is today, with that haggard face and look of defeat. And she will remember me as I am—hardened. She told me I looked successful. I know what that means.’

She was glad that Betty Armstrong and Dorothy Collins were doing all the talking. One of them was a hardworking dog-breeder; the other ran a bookshop in Manchester. They had evidently kept in touch with one another, for they were discussing things and not people, as those do who have lively interests in common. Mary Stokes (now Mary Attwood) seemed cut off from them, by sickness, by marriage, by—it was no use to blink the truth—by a kind of mental stagnation that had nothing to do with either illness or marriage. ‘I suppose,’ thought Harriet, ‘she had one of those small, summery brains, that flower early and run to seed. Here she is—my intimate friend—talking to me with a painful kind of admiring politeness about my books. And I am talking with a painful kind of admiring politeness about her children. We ought not to have met again. It’s awful.’

Dorothy Collins broke in upon her thoughts by asking her a question about publishers’ contracts, and the reply to this tided them over till they emerged into the quad. A brisk figure came bustling along the path, and stopped with a cry of welcome.

‘Why, it’s Miss Vane! How nice to see you after all this long time.’

Harriet thankfully allowed herself to be scooped up by the Dean, for whom she had always had a very great affection, and who had written kindly to her in the days when a cheerful kindliness had been the most helpful thing on earth. The other three, mindful of reverence toward authority, passed on; they had paid their respects to the Dean earlier in the afternoon.

‘It was splendid that you were able to come.’

‘Rather brave of me, don’t you think?’ said Harriet.

‘Oh, nonsense!’ said the Dean. She put her head on one side and fixed Harriet with a bright and bird-like eye. ‘You mustn’t think about all that. Nobody bothers about it at all. We’re not nearly such dried-up mummies as you think. After all, it’s the work you are doing that really counts, isn’t it? By the way, the Warden is longing to see you. She simply loved The Sands of Crime. Let’s see if we can catch her before the Vice-Chancellor arrives.... How did you think Stokes was looking—Attwood, I mean? I never can remember all their married names.’

‘Pretty rotten, I’m afraid,’ said Harriet. ‘I came here to see her, really, you know—but I’m afraid it’s not going to be much of a success.’

‘Ah!’ said the Dean. ‘She’s stopped growing, I expect. She was a friend of yours—but I always thought she had a head like a day-old chick. Very precocious, but no staying power. However, I hope they’ll put her right.... Bother this wind—I can’t keep my cap down. You manage yours remarkably well; how do you do it? And I notice that we are both decently subfusc. Have you seen Trimmer in that frightful frock like a canary lampshade?’

‘That was Trimmer, was it? What’s she doing?’

‘Oh, lord! my dear, she’s gone in for mental healing. Brightness and love and all that.... Ah! I thought we should find the Warden here.’

Shrewsbury College had been fortunate in its wardens. In the early days, it had been dignified by a woman of position; in the difficult period when it fought for Women’s Degrees it had been guided by a diplomat; and now that it was received into the University, its behaviour was made acceptable by a personality. Dr. Margaret Baring wore her scarlet and french grey with an air. She was a magnificent figurehead on all public occasions, and she could soothe with tact the wounded breasts of crusty and affronted male dons. She greeted Harriet graciously, and asked what she thought of the new Library Wing, which would complete the North side of the Old Quad. Harriet duly admired what could be seen of its proportions, said it would be a great improvement, and asked when it would be finished.

‘By Easter, we hope. Perhaps we shall see you at the Opening.’

Harriet said politely that she should look forward to it, and, seeing the Vice-Chancellor’s gown flutter into sight in the distance, drifted tactfully away to join the main throng of old students.

Gowns, gowns, gowns. It was difficult sometimes to recognise people after ten years or more. That in the blue-and-rabbitskin hood must be Sylvia Drake—she had taken that B.Litt. at last, then Miss Drake’s B.Litt. had been the joke of the college; it had taken her so long; she was continually rewriting her thesis and despairing over it. She would hardly remember Harriet, who was so much her junior, but Harriet remembered her well—always popping in and out of the J.C.R. during her year of residence, and chattering away about mediæval Courts of Love. Heavens! Here was that awful woman, Muriel Campshott, coming up to claim acquaintance. Campshott had always simpered. She still simpered. And she was dressed in a shocking shade of green. She was going to say, ‘How do you think of all your plots?’ She did say it. Curse the woman. And Vera Mollison. She was asking: ‘Are you writing anything now?’

‘Yes, certainly,’ said Harriet. ‘Are you still teaching?’

‘Yes—still in the same place,’ said Miss Mollison. ‘I’m afraid my doings are very small beer compared with yours.’

As there was no possible answer to this but a deprecating laugh, Harriet laughed deprecatingly. A movement took place. People were drifting into the New Quad, where a Presentation Clock was to be unveiled, and taking up their positions upon the stone plinth that ran round behind the flower-beds. An official voice was heard exhorting the guests to leave a path for the procession. Harriet used this excuse to disentangle herself from Vera Mollison and establish herself at the back of a group, all of whose faces were strange to her. On the opposite side of the Quad she could see Mary Attwood and her friends. They were waving. She waved back. She was not going to cross the grass and join them. She would remain detached, a unit in an official crowd.

From behind a drapery of bunting the clock, anticipating its official appearance in public, chimed and struck three. Footsteps crunched along the gravel. The procession came into sight, beneath the archway; a small crocodile-walk of elderly people, dressed with the incongruous brilliance of a more sumptuous era, and moving with the slovenly dignity characteristic of university functions in England. They crossed the quad; they mounted the plinth beneath the clock; the male dons removed their Tudor bonnets and mortar-boards in deference to the Vice-Chancellor; the female dons adopted a reverential attitude suggestive of a prayer-meeting. In a thin, delicate voice, the Vice-Chancellor began to speak. He spoke of the history of the college; he made a graceful allusion to achievements which could not be measured by the mere passing of time; he cracked a dry and nutty little jest about relativity and adorned it with a classical tag; he referred to the generosity of the donor and the beloved personality of the deceased Member of Council in whose memory the clock was presented; he expressed himself happy to unveil this handsome clock, which would add so greatly to the beauty of the quadrangle—a quadrangle, he would add, which, although a newcomer in point of time, was fully worthy to take its place among those ancient and noble buildings which were the glory of our University. In the name of the Chancellor and University of Oxford, he now unveiled the clock. His hand went out to the rope; an agitated expression came over the face of the Dean, resolving itself into a wide smile of triumph when the drapery fell away without any unseemly hitch or disaster; the clock was revealed, a few bold spirits started a round of applause; the Warden, in a short neat speech, thanked the Vice-Chancellor for his kindness in coming and his friendly expressions; the golden hand of the clock moved on, and the quarter-chime rang out mellowly. The assembly heaved a sigh of satisfaction; the procession collected itself and made the return journey through the archway, and the ceremony was happily over.