“Most unhappily,” said Miss de Vine, “it was my job.”
“What business had you with a job like that? A woman’s job is to look after a husband and children. I wish I had killed you. I wish I could kill you all. I wish I could burn down this place and all the places like it-where you teach women to take men’s jobs and rob them first and kill them afterwards.”
She turned to the Warden.
“Don’t you know what you’re doing? I’ve heard you sit round snivelling about unemployment-but it’s you, it’s women like you who take the work away from the men and break their hearts and lives. No wonder you can’t get men for yourselves and hate the women who can. God keep the men out of your hands, that’s what I say. You’d destroy your own husbands, if you had any, for an old book or bit of writing… I loved my husband and you broke his heart. If he’d been a thief or a murderer, I’d have loved him and stuck to him. He didn’t mean to steal that old bit of paper-he only put it away. It made no difference to anybody. It wouldn’t have helped a single man or woman or child in the world-it wouldn’t have kept a cat alive; but you killed him for it.”
Peter had got up and stood behind Miss de Vine, with his hand over her wrist. She shook her head. Immovable, implacable, thought Harriet; this won’t make her pulse miss a single beat. The rest of the Common Room looked merely stunned.
“Oh, no!” said Annie, echoing Harriet’s thoughts. “She feels nothing. None of them feel anything. You brazen devils-you all stand together. You’re only frightened for your skins and your miserable reputations. I scared you all, didn’t I? God! how I laughed to see you all look at one another! You didn’t even trust each other. You can’t agree about anything except hating decent women and their men. I wish I’d torn the throats out of the lot of you. It would have been too good for you, though. I wanted to see you thrown out to starve, like us. I wanted to see you all dragged into the gutter. I wanted to see you-you-sneered at and trampled on and degraded and despised as we were. It would do you good to learn to scrub floors for a living as I’ve done, and use your hands for something, and say ‘madam’ to a lot of scum… But I made you shake in your shoes, anyhow. You couldn’t even find out who was doing it-that’s all your wonderful brains come to. There’s nothing in your books about life and marriage and children, is there? Nothing about desperate people-or love-or hate or anything human. You’re ignorant and stupid and helpless. You’re a lot of fools. You can’t do anything for yourselves. Even you, you silly old hags-you had to get a man to do your work for you.
“You brought him here.” She leaned over Harriet with her fierce eyes, as though she would have fallen on her and torn her to pieces. “And you’re the dirtiest hypocrite of the lot. I know who you are. You had a lover once, and he died. You chucked him out because you were too proud to marry him. You were his mistress and you sucked him dry, and you didn’t value him enough to let him make an honest woman of you. He died because you weren’t there to look after him. I suppose you’d say you loved him. You don’t know what love means. It means sticking to your man through thick and thin and putting up with everything. But you take men and use them and throw them away when you’ve finished with them. They come after you like wasps round a jam-jar, and then they fall in and die. What are you going to do with that one there? You send for him when you need him to do your dirty work, and when you’ve finished with him you’ll get rid of him. You don’t want to cook his meals and mend his clothes and bear his children like a decent woman. You’ll use him, like any other tool, to break me. You’d like to see me in prison and my children in a home, because you haven’t the guts to do your proper job in the world. The whole bunch of you together haven’t flesh and blood enough to make you fit for a man. As for you-”
Peter had come back to his place and was sitting with his head in his hands. She went over and shook him furiously by the shoulder, and as he looked up, spat in his face. “You! you dirty traitor! You rotten little white-faced rat! It’s men like you that make women like this. You don’t know how to do anything but talk. What do you know about life, with your title and your money and your clothes and motor-cars? You’ve never done a hand’s turn of honest work. You can buy all the women you want. Wives and mothers may rot and die for all you care, while you chatter about duty and honour. Nobody would sacrifice anything for you-why should they? That woman’s making a fool of you and you can’t see it. If she marries you for your money she’ll make a worse fool of you, and you’ll deserve it. You’re fit for nothing but to keep your hands white and father other men’s children… What are you going to do now, all of you? Run away and squeal to the magistrate because I made fools of you all? You daren’t. You’re afraid to come out into the light. You’re afraid for your precious college and your precious selves. I’m not afraid. I did nothing but stand up for my own flesh and blood. Damn you! I can laugh at you all! You daren’t touch me. You’re afraid of me. I had a husband and I loved him-and you were jealous of me and you killed him. Oh, God! You killed him among you, and we never had a happy moment again.”
She suddenly burst out crying-half dreadful and half grotesque, with her cap crooked and her hands twisting her apron into a knot.
“For Heaven’s sake,” muttered the Dean, desperately, “can’t this be stopped?”
Here Miss Barton got up.
“Come, Annie,” she said, briskly. “We are all very sorry for you, but you mustn’t behave in this foolish and hysterical way. What would the children think if they saw you now? You had better come and lie down quietly and take some aspirin. Bursar! will you please help me out with her?”
Miss Stevens, galvanized, got up and took Annie’s other arm, and all three went out together. The Warden turned to Peter, who stood mechanically wiping his face with his handkerchief and looking at nobody.
“I apologize for allowing this scene to take place, I ought to have known better. You were perfectly right.”
“Of course he was right!” cried Harriet. Her head was throbbing like an engine. “He’s always right. He said it was dangerous to care for anybody. He said love was a brute and a devil. You’re honest, Peter, aren’t you? Damned honest-Oh, God! let me get out of here. I’m going to be sick.”
She stumbled blindly against him as he held the door open for her, and he had to steer her with a firm hand to the cloak-room door. When he came back, the Warden had risen, and the dons with her. They looked stupefied with the shock of seeing so many feelings stripped naked in public.
“Of course, Miss de Vine,” the Warden was saying, “no sane person could possibly think of blaming you.”
“Thank you. Warden,” said Miss de Vine. “Nobody, perhaps, but myself.”
“Lord Peter,” said the Warden, “a little later on, when we are all feeling more ourselves, I think we should all like to say-”
“Please don’t,” said he. “It doesn’t matter at all.”
The Warden went out, and the rest followed her like mutes at a funeral, leaving only Miss de Vine, sitting solitary beneath the window. Peter shut the door after them and came up to her. He was still passing his handkerchief across his mouth. Becoming aware of this, he tossed the linen into the wastepaper basket.
“I do blame myself,” said Miss de Vine, less to him than to herself. “Most bitterly. Not for my original action, which was unavoidable, but for the sequel. Nothing you can say to me could make me feel more responsible than I do already.”
“I can have nothing to say,” said he. “Like you and every member of this Common Room, I admit the principle and the consequences must follow.”
“That won’t do,” said the Fellow, bluntly. “One ought to take some thought for other people. Miss Lydgate would have done what I did in the first place; but she would have made it her business to see what became of that unhappy man and his wife.”