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: ‘March 7 – abusive letter by post to Miss de Vine,’ ‘March 11, do, to Miss Hillyard and Miss Layton,’ ‘April 29 – Harpy drawing to Miss Flaxman,’ of which she had now quite a formidable list.
So the Summer Term set in, sun-flecked and lovely, a departing April whirled on wind-spurred feet towards a splendour of May. Tulips danced in the Fellows’ Garden; a fringe of golden green shimmered and deepened upon the secular beeches; the boats put out upon the Cher between the budding banks, and the wide reaches of the Isis were strenuous with practising eights. Black gowns and summer frocks fluttered up and down the streets of the city and through the College gates, making a careless heraldry with the green of smooth turf and the silver-sable of ancient stone; motor-car and bicycle raced perilously side by side through narrow turnings and the wail of gramophones made hideous the water-ways from Magdalen Bridge to far above the new By-pass. Sunbathers and untidy tea-parties desecrated Shrewsbury Old Quad, newly-whitened tennis-shoes broke out like strange, unwholesome flowers along plinth and window-ledge, and the Dean was forced to issue a ukase in the matter of the bathing-dresses which flapped and fluttered, flag-fashion, from every coign of vantage. Solicitous tutors began to cluck and brood tenderly over such ripening eggs of scholarship as were destined to hatch out damply in the Examination Schools after their three-years’ incubation; candidates, realising with a pang that they had no fewer than eight weeks in which to make up for cut lectures and misspent working hours, went flashing from Bodley to lecture-room and from Camera to coaching; and the thin trickle of abuse from the Poison-Pen was swamped and well-nigh forgotten in that stream of genial commination always poured out from the lips of examinees elect upon examining bodies. Nor, in the onset of Schools Fever, was a lighter note lacking to the general delirium. The draw for the Schools’ Sweep was made in the Senior Common Room, and Harriet found herself furnished with the names of two ‘horses,’ one of whom, a Miss Newland, was said to be well fancied. Harriet asked who she was, having never to her knowledge seen or heard of her.
‘I don’t suppose you have,’ said the Dean. ‘She’s a shy child. But Miss Shaw thinks she’s pretty safe for a First.’
‘She isn’t looking well this term, though,’ said the Bursar. ‘I hope she isn’t going to have a break-down or anything. I told her the other day she ought not to cut Hall so often.’
‘They will do it,’ said the Dean. ‘It’s all very well to say they can’t be bothered to change when they come off the river and prefer pyjamas and an egg in their rooms; but I’m sure a boiled egg and a sardine aren’t sustaining enough to do Schools on.’
‘And the mess it all makes for the scouts to clear up,’ grumbled the Bursar. ‘It’s almost impossible to get the rooms done by eleven when they’re crammed with filthy crockery.’
‘It isn’t being out on the river that’s the matter with Newland,’ said the Dean. ‘That child works.’
‘All the worse,’ said the Bursar. ‘I distrust the candidate who swots in her last term. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if your horse scratched, Miss Vane. She looks nervy to me.’
‘That’s very depressing,’ said Harriet. ‘Perhaps I’d better sell half my ticket while the price is good. I agree with Edgar Wallace, “Give me a good stupid horse who will eat his oats.” Any offers for Newland?’
‘What’s that about Newland?’ demanded Miss Shaw, coming up to them. They were having coffee in the Fellows’ Garden at the time. ‘By the way, Dean, couldn’t you put up a notice about sitting on the grass in the New Quad? I have had to chase two parties off. We cannot have the place looking like Margate Beach.’
‘Certainly not. They know quite well it isn’t allowed. Why are women undergraduates so sloppy?’
‘They’re always exceedingly anxious to be like the men,’ said Miss Hillyard, sarcastically, ‘but I notice the likeness doesn’t extend to showing respect for the College grounds.’
‘Even you must admit that men have some virtues,’ said Miss Shaw.
‘More tradition and discipline, that’s all,’ said Miss Hillyard.
‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Edwards. ‘I think women are messier by nature. They are naturally picnic-minded.’
‘It’s nice to sit in the open air in this lovely weather,’ suggested Miss Chilperic, almost apologetically (for her student days were not far behind her) ‘and they don’t think how awful it looks.’
‘In hot weather,’ said Harriet, moving her chair back into the shade, ‘men have the common sense to stay indoors, where it’s cooler.’
‘Men,’ said Miss Hillyard, ‘have a passion for frowst.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Shaw, ‘but what were you saying about Miss Newland? You weren’t offering to sell your chance, Miss Vane, were you? Because, take it from me, she’s a hot favourite. She’s the Latymer Scholar, and her work’s brilliant.’
‘Somebody suggested she was off her feed and likely to be a non-starter.’
‘That’s very unkind,’ said Miss Shaw, with indignation. ‘Nobody’s any right to say such things.’
‘I think she looks harassed and on edge,’ said the Bursar. ‘She’s too hard-working and conscientious. She hasn’t got the wind-up about Schools, has she?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with her work,’ said Miss Shaw. ‘She does look a little pale, but I expect it’s the sudden heat.’
‘Possibly she’s worried about things at home,’ suggested Mrs. Goodwin. She had returned to College on the 9th May, her boy having taken a fortunate turn for the better, though he was still not out of the wood. She looked anxious and sympathetic,
‘She’d have told me if she had been,’ said Miss Shaw. ‘I encourage my students to confide in me. Of course she’s a very reserved girl, but I have done my best to draw her out, and I feel sure I should have heard if there was anything on her mind,’
‘Well,’ said Harriet, ‘I must see this horse of mine before I decide what to do about my sweep-stake ticket. Somebody must point her out.’
‘She’s up in the Library at this moment, I fancy,’ said the Dean; ‘I saw her stewing away there just before dinner – cutting Hall as usual. I nearly spoke to her. Come and stroll through, Miss Vane. If she’s there, we’ll chase her out for the good of her soul. I want to look up a reference anyhow.’
Harriet got up, laughing, and accompanied the Dean.
‘I sometimes think,’ said Miss Martin, ‘that Miss Shaw would get more real confidence from her pupils if she wasn’t always probing into their little insides. She likes people to be fond of her, which I think is rather a mistake. Be kind, but leave ’em alone, is my motto. The shy ones shrink into their shells when they’re poked, and the egotistical ones talk a lot of rubbish to attract attention. However, we all have our methods.’
She pushed open the Library door, halted in the end bay to consult a book and verify a quotation, and then led the way through the long room. At a table near the centre, a thin, fair girl was working amid a pile of reference books. The Dean stopped.
‘You still here, Miss Newland? Haven’t you had any dinner?’
‘I’ll have some later, Miss Martin. It was so hot, and I want to get
this language paper done.’
The girl looked startled and uneasy. She pushed the damp hair back from her forehead. The whites of her eyes showed like those of a fidgety horse.
‘Don’t you be a little juggins,’ said the Dean. ‘All work and no play is simply silly in your Schools term. If you go on like this, we’ll have to send you away for a rest-cure and forbid work altogether for a week or so. Have you got a headache? You look as if you had.’
‘Not very much, Miss Martin.’
‘For goodness’ sake,’ said the Dean, ‘chuck that perishing old Ducange and Meyer-Lübke or whoever it is and go away and play. I’m always having to chase the Schools people off to the river and into the country,’ she added, turning to Harriet, ‘I wish they’d all be like Miss Camperdown – she was after your time. She frightened Miss Pyke by dividing the whole of her Schools term between the river and the tennis-courts, and she ended up with a First in Greats.’
Miss Newland looked more alarmed than ever.
‘I don’t seem able to think,’ she confessed. ‘I forget things and go blank.’
‘Of course you do,’ said the Dean, briskly. ‘Sure sign you’re doing too much. Stop it at once. Get up now and get yourself some food and then take a nice novel or something, or find somebody to have a knock-up with you.’
‘Please don’t bother, Miss Martin. I’d rather go on with this. I don’t feel like eating and I don’t care about tennis – I wish you wouldn’t bother!’ she finished, rather hysterically.
‘All right,’ said the Dean; ‘bless you, I don’t want to fuss. But do be sensible.’
‘I will, really, Miss Martin. I’ll just finish this paper. I couldn’t feel comfortable if I hadn’t. I’ll have something to eat then and go to bed. I promise I will.’
‘That’s a good girl.’ The Dean passed on, out of the Library, and said to Harriet:
‘I don’t like to see them getting into that state. What do you think of your horse’s chance?’
‘Not much,’ said Harriet. ‘I do know her. That is, I’ve seen her before. I saw her last on Magdalen Tower.’
‘What?’ said the Dean. ‘Oh, lord!’
Of Lord Saint-George, Harriet had not seen very much during that first fortnight of term. His arm was out of a sling; but a remaining weakness in it had curbed his sporting activities, and when she did see him, he informed her that he was working. The matter of the telegraph pole and the insurance had been safely adjusted, and the parental wrath avoided. ‘Uncle Peter,’ to be sure, had had something to say about it, but Uncle Peter, though scathing, was safe as houses. Harriet encouraged the young gentleman to persevere with his work and refused an invitation to dine and meet ‘his people.’ She had no particular wish to meet the Denvers, and had hitherto successfully avoided doing so.
Mr. Pomfret had been assiduously polite. He and Mr. Rogers had taken her on the river, and had included Miss Cattermole in the party. They had all been on their best behaviour, and a pleasant time had been enjoyed by all, the mention of previous encounters having, by common consent, been avoided. Harriet was pleased with Miss Cattermole; she seemed to have made an effort to throw off the blight that had settled upon her, and Miss Hillyard’s report had been encouraging. Mr. Pomfret had also asked Harriet to lunch and to play tennis; on the former occasion she had truthfully pleaded a previous engagement and, on the second, had said, with rather less truth, that she had not played for years, was out of form and was not really keen. After all, one had one’s work to do (Lefanu, ’Twixt Wind and Water, and the History of Prosody among them made up a fairly full programme), and one could not spend all one’s time idling with undergraduates.
On the evening after her formal introduction to Miss Newland, however, Harriet encountered Mr. Pomfret accidentally. She had been to see an old Shrewsburian who was attached to the Somerville Senior Common Room, and was crossing St. Giles on her way back, shortly before midnight, when she was aware of a group of young men in evening dress, standing about one of the trees which adorn that famous thoroughfare. Being naturally inquisitive, Harriet went to see what was up. The street was practically deserted, except for through traffic of the ordinary kind. The upper branches of the tree were violently agitated, and Harriet, standing on the outskirts of the little group beneath, learned from their remarks that Mr. Somebody-or-the-other had undertaken, in consequence of an after-dinner bet, to climb every tree in St. Giles without interference from the Proctor. As the number of trees was large and the place public, Harriet felt the wager to be rather optimistic. She was just turning away to cross the street in the direction of the Lamb and Flag, when another youth, who had evidently been occupying an observation-post, arrived, breathless, to announce that the Proggins was just coming into view round the corner of Broad Street. The climber came down rather hastily, and the group promptly scattered in all directions – some running past her, some making their way down side-streets, and a few bold spirits fleeing towards the small enclosure known as the Fender, within which (since it belongs not to the Town but to St. John’s) they could play at tig with the Proctor to their hearts’ content. One of the young gentlemen darting in this general direction passed Harriet close, stopped with an exclamation, and brought up beside her.
‘Why,it’s you!’ cried Mr. Pomfret, in an excited tone.
‘Me again,’ said Harriet.‘Are you always out without your gown at this time of night?’
‘Practically always,’ said Mr. Pomfret, falling into step beside her. ‘Funny you should always catch me at it. Amazing luck, isn’t it . . . ? I say, you’ve been avoiding me this term. Why?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Harriet; ‘only I’ve been rather busy.’
‘But you have been avoiding me,’ said Mr. Pomfret. ‘I know you have. I suppose it’s ridiculous to expect you to take any particular interest in me. I don’t suppose you ever think about me. You probably despise me.’
‘Don’t be so absurd, Mr. Pomfret. Of course I don’t do anything of the sort. I like you very much, but—’
‘Do you? . . . Then why won’t you let me see you? Look here, I must see you. There’s something I’ve got to tell you. When can I come and talk to you?’
‘What about?’ said Harriet, seized with a sudden and awful qualm.
‘What about? Hang it, don’t be so unkind. Look here, Harriet— No, stop, you’ve got to listen. Darling, wonderful Harriet—’
‘Mr. Pomfret, please—’
But Mr. Pomfret was not to be checked. His admiration had run away with him, and Harriet, cornered in the shadow of the big horse-chestnut by the Lamb and Flag, found herself listening to as eager an avowal of devotion as any young gentleman in his twenties ever lavished upon a lady considerably his senior in age and experience.
‘I’m frightfully sorry, Mr. Pomfret. I never thought— No, really, it’s quite impossible. I’m at least ten years older than you are. And besides—’
‘What does that matter?’ With a large and clumsy gesture Mr. Pomfret swept away the difference of age and plunged on in a flood of eloquence, which Harriet, exasperated with herself and him, could not stop. He loved her, he adored her, he was intensely miserable, he could neither work nor play games for thinking of her, if she refused him he didn’t know what he should do with himself, she must have seen, she must have realised – he wanted to stand between her and all the world—
Mr Pomfret was six feet three and broad and strong in proportion.
‘Please don’t do that,’ said Harriet, feeling as though she were feebly saying ‘Drop it, Cæsar,’ to somebody else’s large and disobedient Alsatian. ‘No, I mean it. I can’t let you—’ And then in a different tone:
‘Look out, juggins! Here’s the Proctor.’
Mr. Pomfret, in some consternation, gathered himself together and turned as to flee. But the Proctor’s bulldog, who had been having a lively time with the tree-climbers in St. Giles, and were now out for blood, had come through the archway at a smart trot, and, seeing a young gentleman not o
nly engaged in nocturnal vagation without his gown but actually embracing a female (mulier vel meretrix, cujus consortio Christianis prorsus interdictum est) leapt gleefully upon him, as upon a lawful prey.
‘Oh, blast!’ said Mr. Pomfret. ‘Here, you—’
‘The Proctor would like to speak to you, sir,’ said the Bulldog, grimly.
Harriet debated with herself whether it might not be more tactful to depart, leaving Mr. Pomfret to his fate. But the Proctor was close on the heels of his men; he was standing within a few yards of her and already demanding to know the offender’s name and college. There seemed to be nothing for it but to face the matter out.
‘Just a moment, Mr. Proctor,’ began Harriet, struggling, for Mr. Pomfret’s sake, to control a rebellious uprush of laughter. ‘This gentleman is with me, and you can’t— Oh! good evening, Mr. Jenkyn.’
It was, indeed, that amiable pro-Proctor. He gazed at Harriet, and was struck dumb with embarrassment.
‘I say,’ broke in Mr. Pomfret, awkwardly, but with a gentlemanly feeling that some explanation was due from him; ‘it was entirely my fault. I mean, I’m afraid I was annoying Miss Vane. She–I—’
‘You can’t very well prog him, you know,’ said Harriet, persuasively, ‘can you now?’
‘Come to think of it,’ replied Mr. Jenkyn, ‘I suppose I can’t. You’re a Senior Member, aren’t you?’ He waved his bulldogs to a distance. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he added, a little stiffly.
‘Not at all,’ said Harriet. ‘It’s a nice night. Did you have good hunting in St. Giles?’
‘Two culprits will appear before their dean to-morrow,’ said the pro-Proctor, rather more cheerfully. ‘I suppose nobody came through here?’
‘Nobody but ourselves,’ said Harriet; ‘and I can assure you that we haven’t been climbing trees.’
A wicked facility in quotation tempted her to add ‘except in the Hesperides’; but she respected Mr. Pomfret’s feelings and restrained herself.
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