It was easy for the friend to say this, having no vulnerable points in her brisk and hard-working life.
‘Peter says I ought to get a secretary and have them weeded out.’
‘Well,’ said the friend, ‘that’s a practical suggestion, anyway. But I suppose, since it’s his advice, you’ll find some ingenious reason for not taking it.’
‘I’m not as bad as that,’ said Harriet; and engaged the secretary.
So matters went on for some months. She made no further effort to discuss the conflicting claims of heart and brain. That line of talk led to a perilous exchange of personalities, in which he, with a livelier wit and better self-control, could always drive her into a corner without exposing himself. It was only by sheer brutal hacking that she could beat down his guard; and she was beginning to be afraid of those impulses to savagery.
She heard no news of Shrewsbury College in the interval, except that one day in the Michaelmas Term there was a paragraph in one of the more foolish London dailies about an ‘Undergraduettes’ Rag,’ informing the world that somebody had made a bonfire of gowns in Shrewsbury Quad and that the ‘Lady Head’ was said to be taking disciplinary measures. Women, of course, were always news. Harriet wrote a tart letter to the paper, pointing out that either ‘undergraduate’ or ‘woman student’ would be seemlier English than ‘undergraduette,’ and that the correct method of describing Dr. Baring was ‘the Warden.’ The only result of this was to provoke a correspondence headed ‘Lady Undergrads,’ and a reference to ‘sweet girl-graduates.’
She informed Wimsey – who happened to be the nearest male person handy for scarifying – that this kind of vulgarity was typical of the average man’s attitude to women’s intellectual interests. He replied that bad manners always made him sick; but was it any worse than headlining foreign monarchs by their Christian names, untitled?
About three weeks before the end of the Easter term, however, Harriet’s attention was again called to college affairs in a way that was more personal and more disquieting.
February was sobbing and blustering its lachrymose way into March, when she received a letter from the Dean.
My dear Miss Vane,
I am writing to ask you whether you will be able to get up to Oxford for the opening of the New Library Wing by the Chancellor next Thursday. This, as you know, has always been the date for the official opening, though we had hoped that the buildings themselves would be ready for habitation at the beginning of this term. However, what with a dispute in the contractors’ firm, and the unfortunate illness of the architect, we got badly held up, so that we shall only just be ready in time. In fact, the interior decoration of the ground floor isn’t finished yet. – Still, we couldn’t very well ask Lord Oakapple to change the date, as he is such a busy man; and after all, the Library is the chief thing, and not the Fellows’ sets, however badly they may need a home to go to, poor dears.
We are particularly anxious – I am speaking for Dr. Baring as well as myself – that you should come, if you can manage to find time, (though of course you have a lot of engagements). We should be very glad to have your advice about a most unpleasant thing that has been happening here. Not that one expects a detective novelist to be a practical policeman; but I know you have taken part in one real investigation, and I feel sure you know a lot more than we do about tracking down malefactors.
Don’t think we are getting murdered in our beds! In some ways I’m not sure that a ‘nice, clean murder’ wouldn’t be easier to deal with! The fact is, we are being victimised by a cross between a Poltergeist and a Poison-Pen, and you can imagine how disgusting it is for everybody. It seems that the letters started coming some time ago, but at first nobody took much notice. I suppose everyone gets vulgar anonymous communications from time to time; and though some of the beastly things didn’t come by post, there’s nothing in a place like this to prevent an outsider from dropping them at the Lodge or even inside the College. But wanton destruction of property is a different matter, and the last outbreak has been so abominable that something really must be done about it. Poor Miss Lydgate’s English Prosody – you saw the colossal work in progress – has been defaced and mutilated in the most revolting manner, and some important manuscript portions completely destroyed, so that they will have to be done all over again. She was almost in tears, poor dear – and the alarming thing is that it now looks as though somebody in college must be responsible. We suppose that some student must have a grudge against the S.C.R. – but it must be more than a grudge – it must be a very horrid kind of pottiness.
One can scarcely call in the police – if you’d seen some of the letters you’d realise that the less publicity the better, and you know how things get about. I dare say you noticed there was a wretched newspaper paragraph about that bonfire in the quad last November. We never discovered who did that, by the way; we thought, naturally, it was a stupid practical joke; but we are now beginning to wonder whether it wasn’t all part of the same campaign.
So if you could possibly snatch time to give us the benefit of your experience, we should be exceedingly grateful. There must be some way of coping – this sort of persecution simply can’t go on. But it’s an awfully difficult job to pin anything down in a place like this, with 150 students and all doors open everywhere night and day.
I am afraid this is rather an incoherent letter, but I’m feeling that put about, with the Opening looming ahead and all the entrance and scholarship papers blowing about me like leaves in Vallombrosa! Hoping very much to see you next Thursday,
Yours very sincerely,
Letitia Martin.
Here was a pretty thing! Just the kind of thing to do the worst possible damage to University women – not only in Oxford, but everywhere. In any community, of course, one always ran the risk of harbouring somebody undesirable; but parents obviously would not care to send their young innocents to places where psychological oddities flourished unchecked. Even if the poison campaign led to no open disaster (and you never knew what people might be driven to under persecution) a washing of dirty linen in public was not calculated to do Shrewsbury any good. Because, though nine-tenths of the mud might not be thrown at random, the remaining tenth might quite easily be, as it usually was, dredged from the bottom of the well of truth, and would stick.
Who should know that better than herself? She smiled wryly over the Dean’s letter. ‘The benefit of your experience’; yes, indeed. The words had, of course been written in the most perfect innocence, and with no suspicion that they could make the galled jade wince. Miss Martin herself would never dream of writing abusive letters to a person who had been acquitted of murder, and it had undoubtedly never occurred to her that to ask the notorious Miss Vane for advice about how to deal with that kind of thing was to talk of rope in the house of the hanged. This was merely an instance of that kind of unworldly tactlessness to which learned and cloistered women were prone. The Dean would be horrified to know that Harriet was the last person who should, in charity, have been approached in the matter; and that, even in Oxford itself, in Shrewsbury College itself—
In Shrewsbury College itself: and at the Gaudy. That was the point. The letter she had found in her sleeve had been put there in Shrewsbury College and at the Gaudy. Not only that; there had been the drawing she had picked up in the quad. Was either, or were both of these, part only of her own miserable quarrel with the world? Or were they rather to be connected with the subsequent outbreak in the college itself? It seemed unlikely that Shrewsbury should have to harbour two dirty-minded lunatics in such quick succession. But if the two lunatics were one and the same lunatic, then the implication was an alarming one, and she herself must, at all costs, interfere at least so far as to tell what she knew. There did come moments when all personal felings had to be set aside in the interests of public service; and this looked like being one of them.
Reluctantly, she reached for the telephone and put a call through to Oxford. While she waited for it, she though
t the matter over in this new light. The Dean had given no details about the poison letters, except that they suggested a grudge against the S.C.R. and that the culprit appeared to belong to the college. It was natural enough to attribute destructive ragging to the undergraduates; but then, the Dean did not know what Harriet knew. The warped and repressed mind is apt enough to turn and wound itself. ‘Soured virginity’ – ‘unnatural life’ – ‘semi-demented spinsters’ – ‘starved appetites and suppressed impulses’ – ‘unwholesome atmosphere’ – she could think of whole sets of epithets, ready-minted for circulation. Was this what lived in the tower set on the hill? Would it turn out to be like Lady Athaliah’s tower in Frolic Wind, the home of frustration and perversion and madness? ‘If thine eye be single, the whole body is full of light – but was it physically possible to have the single eye? ‘What are you to do with the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?’ For them, stereoscopic vision was probably a necessity; as for whom was it not? (This was a foolish play on words, but it meant something.) Well, then, what about this business of choosing one way of life? Must one, after all, seek a compromise, merely to preserve one’s sanity? Then one was doomed for ever to this miserable inner warfare, with confused noise and garments rolled in blood – and, she reflected drearily, with the usual war aftermath of a debased coinage, a lowered efficiency and unstable conditions of government.
At this point the Oxford call came through, with the Dean’s voice sounding full of agitation. Harriet, after hurriedly disclaiming all pretence to detective ability in real life, expressed concern and sympathy and then asked the question that, to her, was of prime importance.
‘How are the letters written?’
‘That’s just the difficulty. They’re mostly done by pasting together bits out of newspapers. So, you see, there’s no handwriting to identify.’
That seemed to settle it; there were not two anonymous correspondents, but only one. Very well, then:
‘Are they merely obscene, or are they abusive or threatening too?’
‘All three. Calling people names that poor Miss Lydgate, didn’t know existed – the worst she knows being Restoration Drama – and threatening everything from public exposure to the gallows.’
Then the tower was Lady Athaliah’s tower.
‘Are they sent to anybody besides the S.C.R?’
‘It’s difficult to say, because people don’t always come and tell you things. But I believe one or two of the students here have had them.’
‘And they come sometimes by post and sometimes to the Lodge?’
‘Yes. And they are beginning to come out on the walls now, and lately they’ve been pushed under people’s doors at night. So it looks as though it must be somebody in college.’
‘When did you get the first one?’
‘The first one I definitely know about was sent to Miss de Vine last Michaelmas Term. That was her first term here, and of course, she thought it must be somebody who had a personal grudge against her. But several people got them shortly afterwards, so we decided it couldn’t be that. We’d never had anything of that sort happening before, so just at present we’re inclined to check up on the First Year students.’
The one set of people that it can’t possibly be, thought Harriet. She only said, however:
‘It doesn’t do to take too much for granted. People may go on quite all right for a time, till something sets them off. The whole difficulty with these things is that the person generally behaves quite normally in other respects. It might be anybody.’
‘That’s true. I suppose it might even be one of ourselves. That’s what’s so horrible. Yes, I know – elderly virgins, and all that. It’s awful to know that at any minute one may be sitting cheek by jowl with somebody who feels like that. Do you think the poor creature knows that she does it herself? I’ve been waking up with nightmares, wondering whether I didn’t perhaps prowl round in my sleep, spitting at people. And my dear! I’m so terrified about next week! Poor Lord Oakapple, coming to open the Library, with venomous asps simply dripping poison over his boots! Suppose they send him something!’
‘Well,’ said Harriet, ‘I think I’ll come along next week. There’s a very good reason why I’m not quite the right person to handle this, but on the other hand, I think I ought to come. I’ll tell you why when we meet.’
‘It’s terribly good of you. I’m sure you’ll be able to suggest something. I suppose you’ll want to see all the specimens there are. Yes? Very well. Every fragment shall be cherished next our hearts. Do we handle them with the tongs for the better preservation of finger-prints?’
Harriet doubted whether finger-prints would be of much service, but advised that precautions should be taken on principle. When she had rung off, with the Dean’s reiterated thanks still echoing from the other end of the line, she sat for a few moments with the receiver in her hand. Was there any quarter to which she might usefully turn for advice? There was; but she was not eager to discuss the subject of anonymous letters, still less the question of what lived in academic towers. She hung up resolutely, and pushed the instrument away.
She woke next morning with a change of heart. She had said that personal feeling ought not to stand in the way of public utility. And it should not. If Wimsey could be made useful to Shrewsbury College, she would use him. Whether she liked it or not, whether or not she had to put up with his saying ‘I told you so,’ she would put her pride in her pocket and ask him the best way to go about the job. She had her bath and dressed, glowing all the time with a consciousness of her own disinterested devotion to the cause of truth. She came into the sitting-room and enjoyed a good breakfast, still congratulating herself. As she was finishing her toast and marmalade, the secretary arrived, bringing in the morning’s post. It contained a hurried note from Peter, sent off the previous evening from Victoria.
Hauled off abroad again at a moment’s notice. Paris first, then Rome. Then God knows. If you should want me – per impossibile – you can get me through the Embassies, or the post-office will forward letters from the Piccadilly address. In any case, you will hear from me on April 1st.
P. D. B. W.
Post occasio calva. One could scarcely bombard the Embassies with letters about an obscure and complicated little affair in an Oxford college, especially when one’s correspondent was urgently engaged in investigating something else all over Europe. The call must have been urgent, for the note was very ill and hastily written, and looked, in fact, as though it had been scribbled at the last moment in a taxi. Harriet amused herself with wondering whether the Prince of Ruritania had been shot, or the Master-Crook of the Continent had brought off a fresh coup, or whether this was the International Conspiracy to Wreck Civilisation with a Death-Ray – all those situations being frequent in her kind of fiction. Whatever it was all about, she would have to carry on unaided and find consolation in a proper independence of spirit.
5
Virginity is a fine picture, as Bonaventure calls it, a blessed thing in itself, and if you will believe a Papist, meritorious. And although there be some inconveniences, irksomeness, solitariness, etc., incident to such persons . . . yet they are but toys in respect, easily to be endured, if conferred to those frequent incumbrances of marriage. . . . And methinks sometime or other, amongst so many rich Bachelors, a benefactor should be found to build a monastical College for old, decayed, deformed, or discontented maids to live together in, that have lost their first loves, or otherwise miscarried, or else are willing howsoever to lead a single life. The rest, I say, are toys in respect, and sufficiently recompensed by those innumerable contents and incomparable privileges of Virginity.
ROBERT BURTON
Harriet drove out to Oxford through a vile downpour of sleet that forced its way between the joints of the all-weather curtains and kept the windscreen-wiper hard at work. Nothing could have been less like her journey of the previous June; but the greatest change of all was in her own feelings. Then, she had been reluctant an
d uneasy; a prodigal daughter without the romantic appeal of husks and very uncertain of the fatted calf. Now, it was the College that had blotted its copybook and had called her in as one calls in a specialist, with little regard to private morals but a despairing faith in professional skill. Not that she cared much for the problem, or had very much hope of solving it; but she was able by now to look upon it as pure problem and a job to be done. In June, she had said to herself, at every landmark on the way: ‘Plenty of time yet – thirty miles before I need begin to feel uncomfortable – twenty miles more respite – ten miles is still a good way to go.’ This time, she was plainly and simply anxious to reach Oxford as quickly as possible – a state of mind for which the weather was perhaps largely responsible. She slithered down Headington Hill with no concern beyond a passing thought for possible skids, crossed Magdalen Bridge with only a caustic observation addressed to a shoal of push-cyclists, muttered ‘Thank God!’ as she reached the St. Cross Road gate, and said ‘Good afternoon’ cheerfully to Padgett the porter.
‘Good afternoon, miss. Nasty day it’s been. The Dean left a message, miss, as you was to be put in the Guest Room over at Tudor and she was out at a meeting but would be back for tea. Do you know the Guest Room, miss? That would be since your time, perhaps. Well, it’s on the New Bridge, miss, between Tudor Building and the North Annexe where the Cottage used to be, miss, only of course that’s all done away now and you has to go up by the main staircase past the West Lecture Room, miss, what used to be the Junior Common Room, miss, before they made the new entrance and moved the stairs, and then turn right and it’s half-way along the corridor. You can’t mistake it, miss. Any of the scouts would show you, miss, if you can find one about just now.’
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