Harriet laughed and thanked him, and he took leave of her at the stair head. She moved to the East side of the tower. There lay the river and Magdalen Bridge, with its pack of punts and canoes. Among them, she distinguished the sturdy figure of Miss Edwards, in a bright orange jumper. It was wonderful to stand so above the world, with a sea of sound below and an ocean of air above, all mankind shrunk to the proportions of an ant-heap. True, a cluster of people still lingered upon the tower itself-her companions in this airy hermitage. They too, spell-bound with beauty-
Great Scott! What was that girl trying to do?
Harriet made a dive at the young woman who was just placing one knee on the stonework and drawing herself up between two crenellations of the parapet.
“Here!” she said, “you mustn’t do that. It’s dangerous.”
The girl, a thin, fair, frightened-looking child, desisted at once. “I only wanted to look over.”
“Well, that’s very silly of you. You might get giddy. You’d better come along down. It would be very unpleasant for the Magdalen authorities if anyone fell over. They might have to stop letting people come up.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”
“Well, you should think. Is anybody with you?”
“No.”
“I’m going down now; you’d better come too.”
“Very well.”
Harriet shepherded the girl down the dark spiral. She had no proof of anything but rash curiosity, but she wondered. The girl spoke with a slightly common accent, and Harriet would have put her down for a shop-assistant, but for the fact that tickets for the Tower were more likely to be restricted to University people and their friends. She might be an undergraduate, come up with a County Scholarship. In any case, one was perhaps attaching too much importance to the incident.
They were passing the bell-chamber now, and the brazen clamour was loud and insistent. It reminded her of a story that Peter Wimsey had told her, years ago now, one day when only a resolute determination to talk on and on enabled him to prevent a most unfortunate outing from ending in a quarrel. Something about a body in a belfry, and a flood, and the great bells bawling the alarm across three counties.
The noise of the bells died down behind her as she passed, and the recollection with it; but she had paused for a moment in the awkward descent, and the girl, whoever she was, had got ahead of her. When she reached the foot of the stair and came out into clear daylight, she saw the slight figure scurrying off through the passage into the quad. She was doubtful whether to pursue it or not. She followed at a distance, watched it turn downwards up the High, and suddenly found herself almost in the arms of Mr. Pomfret, coming down from Queen’s in a very untidy grey flannel suit with a towel over his arm.
“Hullo!” said Mr. Pomfret. “You been saluting the sunrise?”
“Yes. Not a very good sunrise, but quite a good salute.”
“I think it’s going to rain,” said Mr. Pomfret. “But I said I would bathe and I am bathing.”
“Much the same here,” said Harriet. “I said I’d scull, and I’m sculling.”
“Aren’t we a pair of heroes?” said Mr. Pomfret. He accompanied her to Magdalen Bridge, was hailed by an irritable friend in a canoe, who said he had been waiting for half an hour, and went off up-river, grumbling that nobody loved him and that he knew it was going to rain.
Harriet joined Miss Edwards, who said, on hearing about the girclass="underline"
“Well, you might have got her name, I suppose. But I don’t see what one could do about it. It wasn’t one of our people, I suppose?”
“I didn’t recognize her. And she didn’t seem to recognize me.”
“Then it probably wasn’t. Pity you didn’t get the name, all the same. People oughtn’t to do that kind of thing. Inconsiderate. Will you take bow or stroke?”
12
As a Tulipant to the Sun (which our herbalists call Narcissus) when it shines, is admirandus flos ad radios solis sepandens, a glorious Flower exposing itself; but when the Sun sets, or a tempest comes, it hides itself, pines away, and hath no pleasure left… do all Enamoratoes to their Mistress.
– ROBERT BURTON
The mind most effectually works upon the body, producing by his passions and perturbations miraculous alterations, as melancholy, despair, cruel diseases, and sometimes death itself… They that live in fear are never free, resolute, secure, never merry, but in continual pain… It causeth oft-times sudden madness.
– ID.
The arrival of Miss Edwards, together with the rearrangements of residences due to the completion of the Library Building, greatly strengthened the hands of authority at the opening of the Trinity Term. Miss Barton, Miss Burrows and Miss de Vine moved into the three new sets on the ground floor of the Library; Miss Chilperic was transferred to the New Quad, and a general redistribution took place; so that Tudor and Burleigh Buildings were left entirely denuded of dons. Miss Martin, Harriet, Miss Edwards and Miss Lydgate established a system of patrols, by which the New Quad, Queen Elizabeth and the Library Building could be visited nightly at irregular intervals and an eye kept on all suspicious movements…
Thanks to this arrangement, the more violent demonstrations of the Poison-Pen received a check. It is true that a few anonymous letters continued to arrive by post, containing scurrilous insinuations and threats of revenge against various persons. Harriet was carefully docketing as many of these as she could hear of or lay hands on-she noticed that by this time every member of the S.C.R. had been persecuted, with the exception of Mrs. Goodwin and Miss Chilperic; in addition, the Third Year taking Schools began to receive sinister prognostications about their prospects, while Miss Flaxman was presented with an ill-executed picture of a harpy tearing the flesh of a gentleman in a mortar-board.
Harriet had tried to eliminate Miss Pyke and Miss Burrows from suspicion, on the ground that they were both fairly skilful with a pencil, and would therefore be incapable of producing such bad drawings, even by taking thought; she discovered, however, that, though both were dexterous, neither of them was ambidexterous, and that their left-handed efforts were quite as bad as anything produced by the Poison-Pen, if not worse. Miss Pyke, indeed, on being shown the Harpy picture, pointed out that it was, in several respects, inconsistent with the classical conception of this monster; but there again it was clearly easy enough for the expert to assume ignorance; and perhaps the eagerness with which she drew attention to the incidental errors told as much against her as in her favour.
Another trifling but curious episode, occurring on the third Monday in term, was the complaint of an agitated and conscientious First-Year that she had left a harmless modern novel open upon the table in the Fiction Library, and that on her return to fetch it after an afternoon on the river, she had found several pages from the middle of the book-just where she was reading-ripped out and strewn about the room. The First-Year, who was a County Council Scholar, and as poor as a church mouse, was almost in tears; it really wasn’t her fault; should she have to replace the book? The Dean, to whom the question was addressed, said, No; it certainly didn’t seem to be the First-Year’s fault. She made a note of the outrage: “The Search by C. P. Snow, pp. 327 to 340 removed and mutilated, May 13th,” and passed the information on to Harriet, who incorporated it in her diary of the case, together with such items as: