“It’s a great mistake to see one’s own subject out of proportion to its background. The error should be corrected, of course; I did correct it-in a private letter to the author, which is the proper medium for trifling corrections. But the man has, I feel sure, got hold of the master-key to the situation between those two men, and in so doing he has got hold of a fact of genuine importance.”
“Well,” said Miss Lydgate, showing her strong teeth in a genial grin, “you seem to have taken a strong line with Miss Gubbins. Now I’ve brought along somebody I know you’re anxious to meet. This is Miss Harriet Vane-also an artist in the relating of details.”
“Miss Vane?” The historian bent her brilliant, short-sighted eyes on Harriet, and her face lit “This is delightful-Do let me saw how much I enjoyed your last book. I thought it quite the best thing you’d done-though of course I’m not competent to form an opinion from the scientific point of view. I was discussing it with Professor Higgins, who is quite a devotee of yours, and he said it suggested a most interesting possibility, which had not before occurred to him. He wasn’t quite sure whether it would work, but he would do his best to find out. Tell me, what did you have to go upon?”
“Well, I got a pretty good opinion,” said Harriet, feeling a hideous qualm of uncertainty, aid cursing Professor Higgins from the bottom of her heart “But of course-”
At this point. Miss Lydgate espied another old pupil in the distance and ran away. Phoebe Tucker had already been lost on the way across the lawn; Harriet was left to her fate. After ten minutes, during which Miss de Vine ruthlessly turned her victim’s brain inside out, shook the facts out of it like a vigorous housemaid shaking dust from a carpet, beat it, refreshed it, rubbed up the surface of it, relaid it in a new position, and tacked it into place with a firm hand, the Dean mercifully came up and burst into the conversation.
“Thank goodness, the Vice-Chancellor’s taking himself off. Now we can get rid of this filthy old bombazine and show off our party frocks. Why did we ever clamor for degrees and the fun of stewing in full academicals on a hot day? There! he’s gone! Give me those anything-but-glad-rags and I’ll shove them into the S.C.R. with mine. Has yours got a name on it, Miss Vane? Oh, good girl! I’ve go three unknown gowns sitting in my office already. Found lying about at the end of term. No clue to owners, of course. The untidy little beasts seem to think it’s our job to sort out their miserable belongings. They strew them everywhere, regardless, and then borrow each other’s; and if anybody’s fined for being out without a gown, it’s always because somebody pinched it. And the wretched things are always as dirty as dish clouts. They use them for dusters and drawing the fire up. When I think how our devoted generation sweated to get the right to these garments-and these young things don’t care that for them! They go about looking all bits and pieces, like illustrations to Pendennis-so out of date of them! But their idea of being modern is to imitate what male undergraduates were like half a century ago.”
“Some of us old students aren’t much to write home about,” said Harriet. “Look at Gubbins for instance.”
“Oh, my dear! That crashing bore. And all held together with safety-pins. And I wish she’d wash her neck.”
“I think,” said Miss de Vine, with painstaking readiness to set the facts in a just light, “that the color is natural to her skin.”
“Then she should eat carrots and clear her system,” retorted the Dean, snatching Harriet’s gown from her. “No, don’t you bother. It won’t take me a minute to chuck them through the S.C.R. window. And don’t you dare to run away, or I shall never find you again.”
“Is my hair tidy” inquired Miss de Vine, becoming suddenly human and hesitating with the loss of her cap and gown.
“Well, said Harriet, surveying the thick, iron-grey coils from which a quantity of overworked hair-pins stood out like croquet-hoops, ”it’s coming down just a trifle.”
“It always does,‘ said Miss de Vine, making vague dabs at the pins. I think I shall have it cut it short. It must be much less trouble that way.”
“I like it as it is. That big coil suits you. Let me have a go at it, shall I?”
“I wish you would,” said the historian, thankfully submitting to having the pins thrust into place. “I am very stupid with my fingers. I do possess a hat somewhere,” she added, with an irresolute glance round the quad, as though expected to see the hat growing on a tree, “but the Dean said we’d better stay here. Oh, thank you. That feels much better-a marvellous sense of security. Ah! here’s Miss Martin. Miss Vane has kindly been acting as hair-dresser to the White Queen-but oughtn’t I to put on a hat?”
“Not now,” said Miss Martin emphatically. “I’m going to have some over tea, and so are you. I’m ravenous. I’ve been tagging after old Professor Boniface who’s ninety-seven and practically gaga, and screaming in his deaf ear till I’m almost dead. What’s the time? Well, I’m like Marjory Fleming’s turkey-I do not give a single damn for the Old Students’ Meeting; I simply must eat and drink. Let’s swoop down upon the table before Miss Shaw and Miss Stevens collar the last ices.”
2
Tis proper to all melancholy men, saith Mercurialis, what conceit they have once entertained, to be most intent, violent and continually about it. Invitis occurrit, do what they may, they cannot be rid of it, against their wills they must think of it a thousand times over, perpetuo molestantur, nec oblivisci possunt, they are continually troubled with it, in company, out of company; at meat, at exercise, at all times and places, non desinunt ea, quae minime volunt, cogitare; if it be offensive especially, they cannot forget it.
– Robert Burton
So far, so good, thought Harriet, changing for dinner. There had been baddish moments, like trying to renew contact with Mary Stokes. There had also been a brief encounter with Miss Hillyard, the History tutor, who had never liked her, and who had said, with wry mouth and acidulated tongue, “Well, Miss Vane, you have had some very varied experiences since we saw you last.” But there had been good moments too, carrying with them the promise of permanence in a Heraclitean universe. She felt it might be possible to survive the Gaudy Dinner, though Mary Stokes had dutifully bagged for her a place next herself, which was trying. Fortunately, she had contrived to get Phoebe Tucker on her other side. (In these surroundings, she thought of them still as Stokes and Tucker.)
The first thing to strike her, when the procession had slowly filed up to the High Table, and grace had been said, was the appalling noise in Hall. “Strike” was the right word. It fell upon one like the rush and weight of a shouting waterfall; it beat on the ear like the hammer-clang of some infernal smithy; it savaged the air like the metallic clatter of fifty thousand monotype machines casting type. Two hundred female tongues, released as though by a spring, burst into high, clamorous speech. She had forgotten what it was like, but it came back to her tonight how, at the beginning of every term, she had felt that if the noise were to go on like that for one minute more, she would go quite mad. Within a week, the effect of it had always worn off. Use had made her immune. But now it shattered her unaccustomed nerves with all and more than all its original violence. People screamed in her ear, and she found herself screaming back. She looked rather anxiously at Mary; could any invalid bear it? Mary seemed not to notice; she was more animated than she had been earlier in the day and was screaming quite cheerfully at Dorothy Collins. Harriet turned to Phoebe.
“Gosh! I’d forgotten what this row was like. If I scream I shall be as hoarse as a crow. I’m going to bellow at you in a fog-horn kind of voice. Do you mind?”