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 colors are mediaeval enough. And at any rate, the women are no worse than the men. I once saw old Hammond walk in the Encaenia 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 Juniores Senioribus debitam et congruam reverentiam tum in private 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 m 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 birdlike 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 sub-fuse. 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 recognize people after ten years or more. That in the blue-and-rabbit-skin 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 mediaeval 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?”