“Miss Lydgate is a very great and a very rare person. But she could not prevent other people from suffering for her principles. That seems to be what principles are for, somehow… I don’t claim, you know,” he added, with something of his familiar diffidence, “to be a Christian or anything of that kind. But there’s one thing in the Bible that seems to me to be a mere statement of brutal fact-I mean, about bringing not peace but a sword.”
Miss de Vine looked up at him curiously.
“How much are you going to suffer for this?”
“God knows,” he said. “That’s my lookout. Perhaps not at all. In any case, you know, I’m with you-every time.”
When Harriet emerged from the cloak-room, she found Miss de Vine alone.
“Thank Heaven, they’ve gone,” said Harriet. “I’m afraid I made an exhibition of myself. It was rather-shattering, wasn’t it? What’s happened to Peter?”
“He’s gone,” said Miss de Vine.
She hesitated, and then said:
“Miss Vane-I’ve no wish to pry impertinently into your affairs. Stop me if I am saying too much. But we have talked a good deal about facing the facts. Isn’t it time you faced the facts about that man?”
“I have been facing one fact for some time,” said Harriet, staring out with unseeing eyes into the quad, “and that is, that if I once gave way to Peter, I should go up like straw.”
“That,” said Miss de Vine, drily, “is moderately obvious. How often has he used that weapon against you?”
“Never,” said Harriet, remembering the moments when he might have used it. “Never.”
“Then what are you afraid of? Yourself?”
“Isn’t this afternoon warning enough?”
“Perhaps. You have had the luck to come up against a very unselfish and a very honest man. He has done what you asked him without caring what it cost him and without shirking the issue. He hasn’t tried to disguise the facts or bias your judgment. You admit that, at any rate.”
“I suppose he realized how I should feel about it?”
“Realized it?” said Miss de Vine, with a touch of irritation. “My dear girl, give him the credit for the brains he’s got. They are very good ones. He is painfully sensitive and far more intelligent than is good for him. But I really don’t think you can go on like this. You won’t break his patience or his control or his spirit; but you may break his health. He looks like a person pushed to the last verge of endurance.”
“He’s been rushing about and working very hard,” said Harriet, defensively. “I shouldn’t be at all a comfortable person for him to live with. I’ve got a devilish temper.”
“Well, that’s his risk, if he likes to take it. He doesn’t seem to lack courage.”
“I should only make his life a misery.”
“Very well. If you are determined that you’re not fit to black his boots, tell him so and send him away.”
“I’ve been trying to send Peter away for five years. It doesn’t have that effect on him.”
“If you had really tried, you could have sent him away in five minutes… Forgive me. I don’t suppose you’ve had a very easy time with yourself. But it can’t have been easy for him, either-looking on at it, and quite powerless to interfere.”
“Yes. I almost wish he had interfered, instead of being so horribly intelligent. It would be quite a relief to be ridden over rough-shod for a change.”
“He will never do that. That’s his weakness. He’ll never make up your mind for you. You’ll have to make your own decisions. You needn’t be afraid of losing your independence; he will always force it back on you. If you ever find any kind of repose with him, it can only be the repose of very delicate balance.”
“That’s what he says himself. If you were me, should you like to marry a man like that?”
“Frankly,” said Miss de Vine, “I should not. I would not do it for any consideration. A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity. You can hurt one another so dreadfully.”
“I know. And I don’t think I can stand being hurt any more.”
“Then,” said Miss de Vine, “I suggest that you stop hurting other people. Face the facts and state a conclusion. Bring a scholar’s mind to the problem and have done with it.”
“I believe you’re quite right,” said Harriet. “I will. And that reminds me. Miss Lydgate’s History of Prosody was marked PRESS with her own hand this morning. I fled with it and seized on a student to take it down to the printers. I’m almost positive I heard a faint voice crying from the window about a footnote on page 97-but I pretended not to hear.”
“Well,” said Miss de Vine, laughing, “thank goodness, that piece of scholarship has achieved a result at last!”
23
The last refuge and surest remedy, to be put in practice in the utmost place, when no other means will take effect, is, to let them go together and enjoy one another; potissima cura est ut heros amasia sua potiatur, saith Guianerius… Aesculapius himself, to this malady, cannot invent a better remedy, quam ut amanti cedat amatum… than that a Lover his desire.
– ROBERT BURTON
There was no word from Peter in the morning. The Warden issued a brief and discreet announcement to the College that the offender had been traced and the trouble ended. The Senior Common Room, recovering a little from its shock, went quietly about the business of the term. They were all normal again. They had never been anything else. Now that the distorting-glass of suspicion was removed, they were kindly, intelligent human beings-not seeing, perhaps, very much farther beyond their own interests than the ordinary man beyond his job or the ordinary woman beyond her own household-but as understandable and pleasant as daily bread.
Harriet, having got Miss Lydgate’s proofs off her mind, and feeling that she could not brace herself to deal with Wilfrid, took her notes on Le Fanu, and went down to put in a little solid work at the Camera.
Shortly before noon, a hand touched her shoulder.
“They told me you were here,” said Peter. “Can you spare a moment? We can go up on to the roof.”
Harriet put down her pen and followed him across the circular chamber with its desks full of silent readers.
“I understand,” he said, pushing open the swing-door that leads to the winding staircase, “that the problem is being medically dealt with.”
“Oh, yes. When the academic mind has really grasped a hypothesis-which may take a little time-it copes with great thoroughness and efficiency. Nothing will be overlooked.”
They climbed in silence, and came out at length through the little turret upon the gallery of the Camera. The previous day’s rain had passed and left the sun shining upon a shining city. Stepping cautiously over the slatted flooring towards the south-east segment of the circle, they were a little surprised to come upon Miss Cattermole and Mr. Pomfret, who were seated side by side upon a stone projection and rose as they approached, in a flutter, like daws disturbed from a belfry.
“Don’t move,” said Wimsey, graciously. “Plenty of room for all of us.”
“It’s quite all right, sir,” said Mr. Pomfret. “We were just going. Really. I’ve got a lecture at twelve.”
“Dear me!” said Harriet, watching them disappear into the turret. But Peter had already lost interest in Mr. Pomfret and his affairs. He was leaning with his elbows on the parapet, looking down into Cat Street. Harriet joined him.
There, eastward, within a stone’s throw, stood the twin towers of All Souls, fantastic, unreal as a house of cards, clear-cut in the sunshine, the drenched oval in the quad beneath brilliant as an emerald in the bezel of a ring. Behind them, black and grey, New College frowning like a fortress, with dark wings wheeling about her belfry louvres; and Queen’s with her dome of green copper; and, as the eye turned southward, Magdalen, yellow and slender, the tall lily of towers; the Schools and the battlemented front of University; Merton, square-pinnacled, half-hidden behind the shadowed North side and mounting spire of St. Mary’s. Westward again, Christ Church, vast between Cathedral spire and Tom Tower; Brasenose close at hand; St. Aldate’s and Carfax beyond; spire and tower and quadrangle, all Oxford springing underfoot in living leaf and enduring stone, ringed far off by her bulwark of blue hills.