She shut up the note-book, scandal and sonnet together, and began to make her way slowly down the steep path. Halfway down, she met a small party coming up: two small, flaxen-haired girls in charge of a woman whose face seemed at first only vaguely familiar. Then, as they came close, she realized that it was Annie, looking strange without her cap and apron, taking the children for a walk. As in duty bound, Harriet greeted them and asked where they were living now.
“We’ve found a very nice place in Headington, madam, thank you. I’m stopping there myself for my holiday. These are my little girls. This one’s Beatrice and this is Carola. Say how do you do to Miss Vane.”
Harriet shook hands gravely with the children and asked their ages and how they were getting on.
“It’s nice for you having them so close.”
“Yes, madam. I don’t know what I should do without them.” The look of quick pride and joy was almost fiercely possessive. Harriet got a glimpse of a fundamental passion that she had, as it were, forgotten when she made her reckoning; it blazed across the serenity of her sonnet-mood like an ominous meteor.
“They’re all I have, now that I’ve lost their father.”
“Oh, dear, yes,” said Harriet, a little uncomfortably. “Has he-how long ago was that, Annie?”
“Three years, madam. He was driven to it. They said he did what he ought not and it preyed on his mind. But I didn’t care. He never did any harm to-anybody, and a man’s first duty is to his wife and family, isn’t it? I’d have starved with him gladly, and worked my fingers to the bone to keep the children. But he couldn’t get over it. It’s a cruel world for anyone with his way to make and so much competition.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Harriet. The elder child, Beatrice, was looking up at her mother with eyes that were too intelligent for her eight years. It would be better to get off the subject of the husband’s wrongs and iniquities, whatever they might be. She murmured that the children must be a great comfort. “Yes, madam. There’s nothing like having children of your own. They make life worth living. Beatrice here is her father’s living image, aren’t you, darling? I was sorry not to have a boy; but now I’m glad. It’s difficult to bring up boys without a father.”
“And what are Beatrice and Carola going to be when they grow up?”
“I hope they’ll be good girls, madam, and good wives and mothers-that’s what I’ll bring them up to be.”
“I want to ride a motor-cycle when I’m bigger,” said Beatrice, shaking her curls assertively.
“Oh, no, darling. What things they say, don’t they, madam?”
“Yes, I do,” said Beatrice. “I’m going to have a motor-cycle and keep a garage.”
“Nonsense,” said her mother, a little sharply. “You mustn’t talk so. That’s a boy’s job.”
“But lots of girls do boys’ jobs nowadays,” said Harriet.
“But they ought not, madam. It isn’t fair. The boys have hard enough work to get jobs of their own. Please don’t put such things into her head, madam. You’ll never get a husband, Beatrice, if you mess about in a garage, getting all ugly and dirty.”
“ I don’t want one,” said Beatrice, firmly. “I’d rather have a motorcycle.” Annie looked annoyed; but laughed when Harriet laughed.
“She’ll find out some day, won’t she, madam?”
“Very likely she will,” said Harriet. If the woman took the view that any husband was better than none at all, it was useless to argue. And she had rather got into the habit of shying at all discussion that turned upon men and marriage. She said good-afternoon pleasantly and strode on, a little shaken in her mood, but not unduly so. Either one liked discussing these matters or one did not. And when there were ugly phantoms lurking in the corners of one’s mind, skeletons that one dared not show to anybody, even to Peter-
Well, of course not to Peter; he was the last person. And he, at any rate, had, no niche in the grey stones of Oxford. He stood for London, for the swift, rattling, chattering, excitable and devilishly upsetting world of strain and uproar. Here, at the still centre (yes, that line was definitely good), he had no place. For a whole week, she had scarcely given him a thought.
And then the dons began to arrive, full of their vacation activities and ready to take up the burden of the most exacting, yet most lovable term of the academic year. Harriet watched them come, wondering which of those cheerful and determined faces concealed a secret. Miss de Vine had been consulting a library in some ancient Flemish town, where was preserved a remarkable family correspondence dealing with trade conditions between England and Flanders under Elizabeth. Her mind was full of statistics about wool and pepper, and it was difficult to get her to think back to what she had done on the last day of the Hilary Term. She had undoubtedly burnt some old papers-there might have been newspapers among them-certainly she never read the Daily Trumpet-she could throw no light on the mutilated newspaper found in the fireplace.
Miss Lydgate-as Harriet had expected-had contrived in a few short weeks to make havoc of her proofs. She was apologetic. She had spent a most interesting long week-end with Professor Somebody, who was a great authority upon Greek quantitative measures; and he had discovered several passages that contained inaccuracies and thrown an entirely fresh light upon the argument of Chapter Seven. Harriet groaned dismally.
Miss Shaw had taken five other students for a reading-party, had seen four new plays and bought a rather exciting summer outfit. Miss Pyke had spent an enthralling time assisting the curator of a local museum to put together the fragments of three figured pots and a quantity of burial-urns that had been dug up in a field in Essex. Miss Hillyard was really glad to be back in Oxford; she had had to spend a month at her sister’s house while the sister was having a baby; looking after her brother-in-law seemed to have soured her temper. The Dean, on the other hand, had been helping to get a niece married and had found the whole business full of humour. “One of the bridesmaids went to the wrong church and only turned up when it was all over, and there were at least two hundred of us squeezed into a room that would only hold fifty, and I only got half a glass of champagne and no wedding-cake, my tummy was flapping against my spine; and the bridegroom lost his hat at the last moment, and, my dear! would you believe it? people still give plated biscuit-barrels!” Miss Chilperic had gone with her fiancé and his sister to a number of interesting places to study mediaeval domestic sculpture. Miss Burrows had spent most of her time playing golf. There arrived also a reinforcement in the person of Miss Edwards, the Science tutor, just returned from taking a term’s leave. She was a young and active woman, square in face and shoulder, with bobbed hair and a stand-no-nonsense manner. The only member missing from the Senior Common Room was Mrs. Goodwin, whose small son (a most unfortunate child) had come out with measles immediately upon his return to school and again required his mother’s nursing.
“Of course she can’t help it,” said the Dean, “but it’s a very great nuisance, just at the beginning of the Summer Term. If I’d only known, I could have come back earlier.”
“I don’t see,” observed Miss Hillyard, grimly, “what else you can expect, if you give jobs to widows with children. You have to be prepared for these perpetual interruptions. And for some reason, these domestic pre-occupations always have to be put before the work.”