Gaudy Night

17

You look,” said the Dean, “like a nervous parent whose little boy is about to recite The Wreck of the Hesperus at a School Concert.”

“I feel,” said Harriet, “more like the mother of Daniel.

King Darius said to the lions:-

Bite Daniel. Bite Daniel.

Bite him. Bite him. Bite him.”

“G’rrrrr!” said the Dean.

They were standing at the door of the Senior Common Room, which conveniently overlooked the Jowett Walk Lodge. The Old Quad was animated. Late-comers were hurrying over to change for dinner; others, having changed, were strolling about in groups, waiting for the bell; some were stiff playing tennis; Miss de Vine emerged from the Library Building, still vaguely pushing in hairpins (Harriet had checked up on those hairpins and identified them); an elegant figure paraded towards them from the direction of the New Quadrangle.

“Miss Shaw’s got a new frock,” said Harriet.

“So she has! How posh of her!

And she was as fine as a melon in the cornfield,

Gliding and lovely as a ship upon the sea.

That, my dear, is meant for Daniel.”

“Dean, darling, you’re being a cat.”

“Well, aren’t we all? This early arrival of everybody is exceedingly sinister. Even Miss Hillyard is arrayed in her best black gown with a train to it. We all feel there’s safety in numbers.”

It was not out of the way for the Senior Common Room to collect outside their own door before dinner of a fine summer’s day, but Harriet, glancing round, had to admit that there were more of them there that evening than was usual before 7 o’clock. She thought they all seemed apprehensive and some, even hostile. They tended to avoid one another’s eyes; yet they gathered together as though for protection against a common menace. She suddenly found it absurd that anybody should be alarmed by Peter Wimsey; she saw them as a harmless collection of nervous patients in a dentist’s waiting-room. “We seem,” said Miss Pyke’s harsh voice in her ear, “to be preparing a somewhat formidable reception for our guest. Is he of a timid disposition?”

“I should say he was completely hard-boiled,” said Harriet.

“That reminds me,” said the Dean. “In the matter of shirt-fronts-”

“Hard, of course,” said Harriet, indignantly. “And if he pops or bulges, I will pay you five pounds.”

“I have been meaning to ask you,” said Miss Pyke. “How is the popping sound occasioned? I did not like to ask Dr. Threep so personal a question, but my curiosity was very much aroused.”

“You’d better ask Lord Peter,” said Harriet.

“If you think he will not be offended,” replied Miss Pyke, with perfect seriousness, “I will do so.”

The chimes of New College, rather out of tune, played the four quarters and struck the hour.

“Punctuality,” said the Dean, her eyes turned towards the Lodge, “seems to be one of the gentleman’s virtues. You’d better go and meet him and settle his nerves before the ordeal.”

“Do you think so?” Harriet shook her head. “Ye’ll no fickle Tammas Yownie:”

It may, perhaps, be embarrassing for a solitary man to walk across a wide quadrangle under a fire of glances from a collection of collegiate females, but it is child’s play compared, for example, with the long trek from the pavilion at Lord’s to the far end of the pitch, with five wickets down and ninety needed to save the follow-on. Thousands of people then alive might have recognized that easy and unhurried stride and confident carriage of the head. Harriet let him do three-quarters of the journey alone, and then advanced to meet him. “Have you cleaned your teeth and said your prayers?”

“Yes, mamma; and cut my nails and washed behind the ears and got a clean handkerchief.”

Looking at a bunch of students who happened to pass at the moment, Harriet wished she could have said the same of them. They were grubby and dishevelled and she felt unexpectedly obliged to Miss Shaw for having made an effort in the matter of dress. As for her convoy, from his sleek yellow head to his pumps she distrusted him; his mood of the morning was gone, and he was as ready for mischief as a wilderness of monkeys.

“Come along, then, and behave prettily. Have you seen your nephew?”

“I have seen him. My bankruptcy will probably be announced tomorrow. He asked me to give you his love, no doubt thinking I can still be lavish in that commodity. It all returned from him to you, though it was mine before. That colour is very becoming to you.”

His tone was pleasantly detached and she hoped he was referring to her dress; but she was not sure. She was glad to relinquish him to the Dean, who came forward to claim him and to relieve her of the introductions. Harriet watched in some amusement. Miss Lydgate, far too unselfconscious to have any attitude at all, greeted him exactly as she would have greeted anybody else, and asked eagerly about the situation in Central Europe; Miss Shaw smiled with a graciousness that emphasized Miss Stevens’s brusque “Howd’you do” and immediate retreat into animated discussion of college affairs with Miss Allison; Miss Pyke pounced on him with an intelligent question about the latest murder; Miss Barton, advancing with an evident determination to put him right about capital punishment, was disarmed by the blank amiability of the countenance offered for her inspection and observed instead that it had been a remarkably fine day.

“Comedian!” thought Harriet, as Miss Barton, finding she could make nothing of him, passed him on to Miss Hillyard.

“Ah!” said Wimsey instantly, smiling into the History Tutor’s sulky eyes, “this is delightful. Your paper in the Historical Review on the diplomatic aspects of the Divorce…”

(Heavens! thought Harriet, I hope he knows his stuff.)

“… really masterly. Indeed, I felt that, if anything, you had slightly underestimated the pressure brought to bear upon Clement by…”

“… consulted the unedited dispatches in the possession of…”

“… you might have carried the argument a trifle further. You very rightly point out that the Emperor…”

(Yes; he had read the article all right.)

“… disfigured by prejudice, but a considerable authority on the Canon Law…”

“… needing to be thoroughly overhauled and re-edited. Innumerable mistranscriptions and at least one unscrupulous omission…”

“…If at any time you require access, I could probably put you into touch… official channels… personal introduction… raise no difficulties…”

“Miss Hillyard,” said the Dean to Harriet, “looks as though she had been given a birthday present.”

“I think he’s offering her access to some out-of-the-way source of information.” (After all, she thought, he is Somebody, though one never seems able to remember it.)

“… not so much political as economic.”

“Ah!” said Miss Hillyard, “when it comes to a question of national finance Miss de Vine is the real authority.”

She effected the introduction herself, and the discussion continued. “Well,” said the Dean, “he has made a complete conquest of Miss Hillyard.”

“And Miss de Vine is making a complete conquest of him.”

“It’s mutual, I fancy. At any rate, her back hair’s coming down, which is a sure sign of pleasure and excitement.”

“Yes,” said Harriet. Wimsey was arguing with intelligence about the appropriation of monastic funds, but she had little doubt that the back of his mind was full of hairpins.

“Here comes the Warden. We shall have to separate them forcibly. He’s got to face Dr. Baring and take her in to dinner… All’s well. She has collared him. That firm assertion of the Royal Prerogative!… Do you want to sit next him and hold his hand?”

“I don’t think he needs any assistance from me. You’re the person for him. Not a suspect, but full of lively information.”

“All right; I’ll go and prattle to him. You’d better sit opposite to us and kick me if I say anything indiscreet.”

By this arrangement, Harriet found herself placed a little uncomfortably between Miss Hillyard (in whom she always felt an antagonism to herself) and Miss Barton (who was obviously still worried about Wimsey’s detective hobbies), and face to face with the two people whose glances were most likely to disturb her gravity. On the other side of the Dean sat Miss Pyke; on the other side of Miss Hillyard was Miss de Vine, well under Wimsey’s eye. Miss Lydgate, that secure fortress, was situated at the far end of the table, offering no kind of refuge.

Neither Miss Hillyard nor Miss Barton had much to say to Harriet, who was thus able to follow, without too much difficulty, the Warden’s straightforward determination to size up Wimsey and Wimsey’s diplomatically veiled but equally obstinate determination to size up the Warden; a contest carried on with unwavering courtesy on either side.

Dr. Baring began by inquiring whether Lord Peter had been conducted over the College and what he thought of it, adding, with due modesty, that architecturally, of course, it could scarcely hope to compete with the more ancient foundations.

“Considering,” said his lordship plaintively, “that the architecture of my own ancient foundation is mathematically compounded of ambition, distraction, uglification and derision, that remark sounds like sarcasm.”

The Warden, almost seduced into believing herself guilty of a breach of manners, earnestly assured him that she had intended no personal allusion. “An occasional reminder is good for us,” said he. “We are mortified in nineteenth-century Gothic, lest in our overweening Balliolity we forget God. We pulled down the good to make way for the bad; you, on the contrary, have made the world out of nothing-a more divine procedure.”

The Warden, maneuvering uneasily on this slippery ground between jest and earnest, found foothold:

“It is quite true that we have had to make what we can out of very little-and that, you know, is typical of our whole position here.”

“Yes; you are practically without endowments?”

The question was so offered as to include the Dean, who said cheerfully: “Quite right. All done by cheeseparing.”

“That being so,” he said, seriously, “even to admire seems to be a kind of impertinence. This is a very fine hall-who is the architect?” the Warden supplied him with a little local history, breaking off to say: “But probably you are not specially interested in all this question of women’s education.”

“Is it still a question? It ought not to be. I hope you are not going to ask me whether I approve of women’s doing this and that.”

“Why not?”

“You should not imply that I have any right either to approve or disapprove.”

“I assure you,” said the Warden, “that even in Oxford we still encounter a certain number of people who maintain their right to disapprove.”

“And I had hoped I was returning to civilization.”

The removal of fish-plates caused a slight diversion, and the Warden took the opportunity to turn her inquiries upon the situation in Europe. Here the guest was on his own ground. Harriet caught the Dean’s eye and smiled. But the more formidable challenge was coming. International politics led to history, and history-in Dr. Baring’s mind-to philosophy. The ominous name of Plato suddenly emerged from a tangle of words, and Dr. Baring moved out a philosophical speculation, like a pawn, and planted it temptingly en prise.

Many persons had plunged to irretrievable disaster over the Warden’s philosophic pawn. There were two ways of taking it: both disastrous. One was to pretend to knowledge; the other, to profess an insincere eagerness for instruction. His lordship smiled gently and refused the gambit:

“That is out of my stars. I have not the philosophic mind.”

“And how would you define the philosophic mind, Lord Peter?”

“I wouldn’t, definitions are dangerous. But I know that philosophy is a closed book to me, as music is to the tone-deaf.”

The Warden looked at him quickly; he presented her with an innocent profile, drooping and contemplative over his plate, like a heron brooding by a pond.

“A very apt illustration,” said the Warden; “as it happens, I am tone-deaf myself.”

“Are you? I thought you might be,” he said, equably.

“That is very interesting. How can you tell?”

“There is something in the quality of the voice.” He offered candid grey eyes for examination. “But it’s not a very safe conclusion to draw, and, as you may have noticed, I didn’t draw it. That is the art of the charlatan-to induce a confession and present it as the result of deduction.”

“I see,” said Dr. Baring. “You expose your technique very frankly.”

“You would have seen through it in any case, so it is better to expose one’s self and acquire an unmerited reputation for candour. The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it-that is at the bottom of the λέγειν ώζ δεϊt.”

“So there is one philosopher whose books are not closed to you? Next time, I will start by way of Aristotle.”

She turned to her left-hand neighbor and released him.

“I am sorry,” said the Dean, “we have no strong drink to offer you.” His face was eloquent of mingled apprehension and mischief.

“The toad beneath the harrow knows where every separate tooth-point goes. Do you always prove your guests with hard questions?”

“Till they show themselves to be Solomons. You have passed the test with great credit.”

“Hush! there is only one kind of wisdom that has any social value, and that is the knowledge of one’s own limitations.”

“Nervous young dons and students have before now been carried out in convulsions through being afraid to say boldly that they did not know.”

“Showing themselves,” said Miss Pyke across the Dean, “less wise than Socrates, who made the admission fairly frequently.”

“For Heaven’s sake,” said Wimsey, “don’t mention Socrates. It might start all over again.”

“Not now,” said the Dean. “She will ask no questions now except for instruction.”

“There is a question on which I am anxious to be instructed,” said Miss Pyke, “if you will not take it amiss.”

Miss Pyke, of course, was still worried about Dr. Threep’s shirt-front, and determined on getting enlightenment. Harriet hoped that Wimsey would recognize her curiosity for what it was: not skittishness, but the embarrassing appetite for exact information which characterizes the scholarly mind.

“That phenomenon,” he said, readily, “comes within my own sphere of knowledge. It occurs because the human torso possesses a higher factor of variability than the ready-made shirt. The explosive sound you mention is produced when the shirt-front is slightly too long for the wearer. The stiff edges, being forced slightly apart by the inclination of the body, come back into contact with a sharp click, similar to that emitted by the elytra of certain beetles. It is not to be confused, however, with the ticking of the Deathwatch, which is made by tapping with the jaws and is held to be a love-call. The clicking of the shirt-front has no amatory significance, and is, indeed, an embarrassment to the insect. It may be obviated by an increased care in selection or, in extreme cases, by having the garment made to measure.”

“Thank you so much,” said Miss Pyke. “That is a most satisfactory explanation. At this time of day, it is perhaps not improper to adduce the parallel instance of the old-fashioned corset, which was subject to a similar inconvenience.”

“The inconvenience,” added Wimsey, “was even greater in the case of plate armour, which had to be very well tailored to allow of movement at all.”

At this point, Miss Barton captured Harriet’s attention with some remark or other, and she lost track of the conversation on the other side of the table. When she picked up the threads again, Miss Pyke was giving her neighbours some curious details about Ancient Minoan civilization, and the Warden was apparently waiting till she had finished to pounce on Peter again. Turning to her right, Harriet saw that Miss Hillyard was watching the group with a curiously concentrated expression. Harriet asked her to pass the sugar, and she came back to earth with a slight start.

“They seem to be getting on very well over there,” said Harriet.

“Miss Pyke likes an audience,” said Miss Hillyard, with so much venom that Harriet was quite astonished.

“It’s good for a man to have to do the listening sometimes,” she suggested.

Miss Hillyard agreed absently. After a slight pause, during which dinner proceeded without incident, she said:

“Your friend tells me he can obtain access for me to some private collections of historical documents in Florence. Do you suppose he means what he says?”

“If he says so, you may be sure he can and will.”

“That is a testimonial,” said Miss Hillyard. “I am very glad to hear it.”

Meanwhile, the Warden had effected her capture, and was talking to Peter in a low tone and with some earnestness. He listened attentively, while he peeled an apple, the narrow coils of the rind sliding slowly over his fingers. She concluded with some question; and he shook his head.

“It is very unlikely. I should say there was no hope of it at all.”

Harriet wondered whether the subject of the Poison-Pen had risen at last to the surface; but presently he said:

“Three hundred years ago it mattered comparatively little. But now that you have the age of national self-realization, the age of colonial expansion, the age of the barbarian invasions and the age of the decline and fall, all jammed cheek by jowl in time and space, all armed alike with poison-gas and going through the outward motions of an advanced civilization, principles have become more dangerous than passions. It’s getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the first thing a principle does-if it really is a principle-is to kill somebody.”

“‘The real tragedy is not the conflict of good with evil but of good with good’; that means a problem with no solution.”

“Yes. Afflicting, of course, to the tidy mind. One may either hulloo on the inevitable, and be called a bloodthirsty progressive; or one may try to gain time and be called a bloodthirsty reactionary. But when blood is their argument, all argument is apt to be-merely bloody.”

The Warden passed the adjective at its face-value.

“I sometimes wonder whether we gain anything by gaining time.”

“Well-if one leaves letters unanswered long enough, some of them answer themselves. Nobody can prevent the Fall of Troy, but a dull, careful person may manage to smuggle out the Lares and Penates-even at the risk of having the epithet pius tacked to his name.”

“The Universities are always being urged to march in the van of progress.”

“But epic actions are all fought by the rearguard-at Roncevaux and Thermopylae.”

“Very well,” said the Warden, laughing, “let us die in our tracks, having accomplished nothing but an epic.”

She collected the High Table with her eye, rose, and made a stately exit. Peter effaced himself politely against the panelling while the dons filed past him, arriving at the edge of the dais in time to pick up Miss Shaw’s scarf as it slipped from her shoulders. Harriet found herself descending the staircase between Miss Martin and Miss de Vine, who remarked:

“You are a courageous woman.”

“Why?” said Harriet lightly. “To bring my friends here and have them put to the question?”

“Nonsense,” interrupted the Dean. “We all behaved beautifully. Daniel is still uneaten-in fact, at one point he bit the lion. Was that genuine, by the way?”

“About tone-deafness? Probably just a little more genuine than he made out.”

“Will he lay traps all evening for us to walk into?”

Harriet realized for a moment how queer the whole situation was. Once again, she felt Wimsey as a dangerous alien and herself on the side of the women, who, with so strange a generosity, were welcoming the inquisitor among them. She said, however:

“If he does, he will display all the mechanism in the most obliging manner.”

“After one is inside. That’s very comforting.”

“That,” said Miss de Vine, brushing aside these surface commentaries, “is a man able to subdue himself to his own ends. I should be sorry for anyone who came up against his principles-whatever they are, and if he has any.”

She detached herself from the other two, and went on into the Senior Common Room with a sombre face.

“Curious,” said Harriet. “She is saying about Peter Wimsey exactly what I have always thought about herself.”

“Perhaps she recognizes a kindred spirit.”

“Or a foe worthy of-I ought not to say that.”

Here Peter and his companion caught them up, and the Dean, joining Miss Shaw, went on in with her. Wimsey smiled at Harriet, an odd, interrogative smile.

“What’s worrying you?”

“Peter-I feel exactly like Judas.”

“Feeling like Judas is part of the job. No job for a gentleman, I’m afraid. Shall we wash our hands like Pilate and be thoroughly respectable?”

She slid her hand under his arm.

“No; we’re in for it now. We’ll be degraded together.”

“That will be nice. Like the lovers in that Strohheim film, we’ll go and sit on the sewer.” She could feel his bone and muscle, reassuringly human, under the fine broadcloth. She thought: “He and I belong to the same world, and all these others are the aliens.” And then: “Damn it all! this is our private fight-why should they have to join in?” But that was absurd.

“What do you want me to do, Peter?”

“Chuck the ball back to me if it runs out of the circle. Not obviously. Just exercise your devastating talent for keeping to the point and speaking the truth.”

“That sounds easy.”

“It is-for you. That’s what I love you for. Didn’t you know? Well, we can’t stop to argue about it now; they’ll think we’re conspiring about something.”

She released his arm and went into the room ahead of him, feeling suddenly embarrassed and looking, in consequence, defiant. The coffee was already on the table, and the S.C.R. were gathered about it, helping themselves. She saw Miss Barton advance upon Peter, with a courteous offer of refreshment on her lips but the light of determination in her eye. Harriet did not for the moment care what happened to Peter. He had given her a new bone to worry. She provided herself with coffee and a cigarette, and retired with them and the bone into a corner. She had often wondered, in a detached kind of way, what it was that Peter valued in her and had apparently valued from that first day when she had stood in the dock and spoken for her own life. Now that she knew, she thought that a more unattractive pair of qualities could seldom have been put forward as an excuse for devotion.

“But do you really feel comfortable about it. Lord Peter?”

“No-I shouldn’t recommend it as a comfortable occupation. But is your or my or anybody’s comfort of very great importance?”

Miss Barton probably took that for flippancy; Harriet recognized the ruthless voice that had said, “What does it matter if it hurts…? Let them fight it out… Unattractive; but if he meant what he said, it explained a great many things. Those were qualities that could be recognized under the most sordid conditions… “Detachment… if you ever find a person who likes you because of it, that liking is sincere.” That was Miss de Vine; and Miss de Vine was sitting not very far away, her eyes, behind their thick glasses, fixed on Peter with a curious, calculating look.

Conversations, carried on in groups, were beginning to falter and fall into silence. People were sitting down. The voices of Miss Allison and Miss Stevens rose into prominence. They were discussing some collegiate question, and they were doing it intently and desperately. They called upon Miss Burrows to give an opinion. Miss Shaw turned to Miss Chilperic and made a remark about the bathing at “Spinsters’ Splash.” Miss Chilperic replied elaborately-too elaborately; her answer took too long and attracted attention; she hesitated, became confused, and stopped speaking. Miss Lydgate, with a troubled face, was listening to an anecdote that Mrs. Goodwin was telling about her little boy; in the middle of it, Miss Hillyard, who was within earshot, rose pointedly, stabbed out her cigarette on a distant ash-tray, and moved slowly, and as though despite herself, to a window-seat close to where Miss Barton was still standing. Harriet could see her angry, smouldering glance fix itself on Peter’s bent head and then jerk away across the quad, only to return again. Miss Edwards, close to Harriet and a little in front other on a low chair, had her hands set squarely and rather mannishly on her knees, and was leaning forward; she had the air of waiting for something. Miss Pyke, on her feet, lighting a cigarette, was apparently looking for an opportunity to engage Peter’s attention; she appeared eager and interested, and more at her ease than most of the others. The Dean, curled on a humpty, was frankly listening to what Peter and Miss Barton were saying. They were all listening, really, and at the same time most of them were trying to pretend that he was there as an ordinary guest-that he was not an enemy-not a spy. They were trying to prevent him from becoming openly the centre of attention as he was already the centre of consciousness.

The Warden, seated in a deep chair near the fireplace, gave nobody any help. One by one, the spurts of talk failed and died, leaving the one tenor floating, like a solo instrument executing a cadenza when the orchestra has fallen silent:

“The execution of the guilty is unpleasant-but not nearly so disturbing as the slaughter of the innocents. If you are out for my blood, won’t you allow me to hand you a more serviceable weapon?”

He glanced round and, finding that everybody but Miss Pyke and themselves was sitting down silent, made a brief, interrogative pause, which looked like politeness, but which Harriet mentally classed as “good theatre.”

Miss Pyke led the way to a large sofa near Miss Hillyard’s window-seat and said, as she settled herself in the corner of it:

“Do you mean the murderer’s victims?”

“No,” said Peter, “I meant my own victims.”

He sat down between Miss Pyke and Miss Barton, and went on in a pleasantly conversational tone:

“For example; I happened to find out that a young woman had murdered an old one for her money. It didn’t matter much: the old woman was dying in any case, and the girl (though she didn’t know that) would have inherited the money in any case. As soon as I started to meddle, the girl set to work again, lulled two innocent people to cover her tracks and murderously attacked three others. Finally she killed herself. If I’d left her alone, there might have been only one death instead of four.”

“Good gracious!” said Miss Pyke. “But the woman would have been at large.”

“Oh, yes. She wasn’t a nice woman, and she had a nasty influence on certain people. But who killed those other two innocents-she or society?”

“They were killed,” said Miss Barton, “by her fear of the death-penalty. If the unfortunate woman had been medically treated, they and she would still be alive today.”

“I told you it was a good weapon. But it isn’t as simple as all that. If she hadn’t killed those others, we should probably never have caught her, and so far from being medically treated she would be living in prosperity-and incidentally corrupting one or two people’s minds, if you think that of any importance.”

“You are suggesting, I think,” said the Warden, while Miss Barton rebelliously grappled with this problem, “that those innocent victims died for the people; sacrificed to a social principle.”

“At any rate, to your social principles,” said Miss Barton.

“Thank you. I thought you were going to say, to my inquisitiveness.”

“I might have done so,” said Miss Barton, frankly. “But you lay claim to a principle, so we’ll stick to that.”

“Who were the other three people attacked?” asked Harriet. (She had no fancy to let Miss Barton get away with it too easily.)

“A lawyer, a colleague of mine and myself. But that doesn’t prove that I have any principles. I’m quite capable of getting killed for the fun of the thing. Who isn’t?”

“I know,” said the Dean. “It’s funny that we get so solemn about murders and executions and mind so little about taking risks in motoring and swimming and climbing mountains and so on. I suppose we do prefer to die for the fun of the thing.”

“The social principle seems to be,” suggested Miss Pyke, “that we should die for our own fun and not other people’s.”

“Of course I admit,” said Miss Barton, rather angrily, “that murder must be prevented and murderers kept from doing further harm. But they ought not to be punished and they certainly ought not to be killed.”

“I suppose they ought to be kept in hospitals at vast expense, along with other unfit specimens,” said Miss Edwards. “Speaking as a biologist, I must say I think public money might be better employed. What with the number of imbeciles and physical wrecks we allow to go about and propagate their species, we shall end by devitalizing whole nations.”

“Miss Schuster-Slatt would advocate sterilization,” said the Dean.

“They’re trying it in Germany, I believe,” said Miss Edwards.

“Together”, said Miss Hillyard, “with the relegation of woman to her proper place in the home.”

“But they execute people there quite a lot,” said Wimsey, “so Miss Barton can’t take over their organization lock, stock and barrel.”

Miss Barton uttered a loud protest against any such suggestion, and returned to her contention that her social principles were opposed to violence of every description.

“Bosh!” said Miss Edwards. “You can’t carry through any principle without doing violence to somebody. Either directly or indirectly. Every time you disturb the balance of nature you let in violence. And if you leave well alone you get violence in any case. I quite agree that murderers shouldn’t be hanged-it’s wasteful and unkind. But I don’t agree that they should be comfortably fed and housed while decent people go short. Economically speaking, they should be used for laboratory experiments.”

“To assist the further preservation of the unfit?” asked Wimsey, drily.

“To assist in establishing scientific facts,” replied Miss Edwards, more drily still.

“Shake hands,” said Wimsey. “Now we have found common ground to stand on. Establish the facts, no matter what comes of it.”

“On that ground, Lord Peter,” said the Warden, “your inquisitiveness becomes a principle. And a very dangerous one.”

“But the fact that A killed B isn’t necessarily the whole of the truth,” persisted Miss Barton. “A’s provocation and state of health are facts, too.”

“Nobody surely disputes that,” said Miss Pyke. “But one can scarcely ask the investigator to go beyond his job. If we mayn’t establish any conclusion for fear somebody should make an injudicious use of it, we are back in the days of Galileo. There would be an end to discovery.”

“Well,” said the Dean, “I wish we could stop discovering things like poison-gas.”

“There can be no objection to the making of discoveries,” said Miss Hillyard; “but is it always expedient to publish them? In the case of Galileo, the Church-”

“You’ll never get any scientist to agree there,” broke in Miss Edwards. “To suppress a fact is to publish a falsehood.”

For a few minutes Harriet lost the thread of the discussion, which now became general. That it had been deliberately pushed to this point, she could see; but what Peter wanted to make of it, she had no idea. Yet he was obviously interested. His eyes, under their half-closed lids, were alert. He was like a cat waiting at a mouse-hole. Or was she half-consciously connecting him with his own blazon? “Sable: three mice courant argent; a crescent for difference. The crest a domestick catt…”

“Of course,” said Miss Hillyard in a hard, sarcastic voice, “if you think private loyalties should come before loyalty to one’s job…”

(“Couched as to spring, proper.”) That was what he had been waiting for, then. One could almost see the silken fur ripple.

“Of course, I don’t say that one should be disloyal to one’s job for private reasons,” said Miss Lydgate. “But surely, if one takes on personal responsibilities, one owes a duty in that direction. If one’s job interferes with them, perhaps one should give up the job.”

“I quite agree,” said Miss Hillyard. “But then, my private responsibilities are few, and possibly I have no right to speak. What is your opinion, Mrs. Goodwin?”

There was a most unpleasant pause.

“If you mean that personally,” said the Secretary, getting up and facing the Tutor, “21;I am so far of your opinion that I have asked Dr. Baring to accept my resignation. Not because of any of the monstrous allegations that have been made about me, but because I realize that under the circumstances I can’t do my work as well as I ought. But you are all very much mistaken if you think I am at the bottom of the trouble in this college. I’m going now, and you can say what you like about me-but may I say that anybody with a passion for facts will do better to collect them from unprejudiced sources. Miss Barton at least will admit that mental health is a fact like another.”

Into the horrified silence that followed, Peter dropped three words like lumps of ice.

“Please don’t go.”

Mrs. Goodwin stopped short with her hand on the door.

“It would be a great pity,” said the Warden, “to take anything personally that is said in a general discussion. I feel sure Miss Hillyard meant nothing of that kind. Naturally, some people have better opportunities than others for seeing both sides of a question. In your own line of work, Lord Peter, such conflicts of loyalty must frequently occur.”

“Oh, yes. I once thought I had the agreeable choice between hanging either my brother or my sister. Fortunately, it came to nothing.”

“But supposing it had come to something?” demanded Miss Barton, pinning the argumentum ad hominem with a kind of relish.

“Oh, well-What does the ideal detective do then. Miss Vane?”

“Professional etiquette,” said Harriet, “would suggest an extorted confession, followed by poison for two in the library.”

“You see how easy it is, when you stick to the rules,” said Wimsey. “Miss Vane feels no compunction. She wipes me out with a firm hand, rather than damage my reputation. But the question isn’t always so simple. How about the artist of genius who has to choose between letting his family starve and painting pot-boilers to keep them?”

“He’s no business to have a wife and family,” said Miss Hillyard.

“Poor devil! Then he has the further interesting choice between repressions and immorality. Mrs. Goodwin, I gather, would object to the repressions and some people might object to the immorality.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Miss Pyke. “You have hypothesized a wife and family. Well-he could stop painting. That, if he really is a genius, would be a loss to the world. But he mustn’t paint bad pictures-that would be really immoral.”

“Why?” asked Miss Edwards. “What do a few bad pictures matter, more or less?”

“Of course they matter,” said Miss Shaw. She knew a good deal about painting. “A bad picture by a good painter is a betrayal of truth-his own truth.”

“That’s only a relative kind of truth,” objected Miss Edwards.

The Dean and Miss Burrows fell headlong upon this remark, and Harriet, seeing the argument in danger of getting out of hand, thought it time to retrieve the ball and send it back. She knew now what was wanted, though not why it was wanted.

“If you can’t agree about painters, make it someone else. Make it a scientist.”

“I’ve no objection to scientific pot-boilers,” said Miss Edwards. “I mean, a popular book isn’t necessarily unscientific.”

“So long,” said Wimsey, “as it doesn’t falsify the facts. But it might be a different kind of thing. To take a concrete instance-somebody wrote a novel called The Search-”

“C. P. Snow,” said Miss Burrows. “It’s funny you should mention that. It was the book that the-”

“I know,” said Peter. “That’s possibly why it was in my mind.”

“I never read the book,” said the Warden.

“Oh, I did,” said the Dean. “It’s about a man who starts out to be a scientist and gets on very well till, just as he’s going to be appointed to an important executive post, he finds he’s made a careless error in a scientific paper. He didn’t check his assistant’s results, or something. Somebody finds out, and he doesn’t get the job. So he decides he doesn’t really care about science after all.”

“Obviously not,” said Miss Edwards. “He only cared about the post.”

“But,” said Miss Chilperic, “if it was only a mistake-”

“The point about it,” said Wimsey, “is what an elderly scientist says to him. He tells him: ‘The only ethical principle which has made science possible is that the truth shall be told all the time. If we do not penalize false statements made in error, we open up the way for false statements by intention. And a false statement of fact, made deliberately, is the most serious crime a scientist can commit.’ Words to that effect. I may not be quoting quite correctly.”

“Well, that’s true, of course. Nothing could possibly excuse deliberate falsification.”

“There’s no sense in deliberate falsification, anyhow,” said the Bursar. “What could anybody gain by it?”

“It has been done”, said Miss Hillyard, “frequently. To get the better of an argument. Or out of ambition.”

“Ambition to be what?” cried Miss Lydgate. “What satisfaction could one possibly get out of a reputation one knew one didn’t deserve? It would be horrible.”

Her innocent indignation upset everybody’s gravity.

“How about the Forged Decretals… Chatterton… Ossian… Henry Ireland… those Nineteenth-Century Pamphlets the other day…?”

“I know,” said Miss Lydgate, perplexed. “I know people do it. But why? They must be mad.”

“In the same novel,” said the Dean, “somebody deliberately falsifies a result-later on, I mean-in order to get a job. And the man who made the original mistake finds it out. But he says nothing, because the other man is very badly off and has a wife and family to keep.”

“These wives and families!” said Peter.

“Does the author approve?” inquired the Warden…

“Well,” said the Dean, “the book ends there, so I suppose he does.”

“But does anybody here approve? A false statement is published and the man who could correct it lets it go, out of charitable considerations. Would anybody here do that? There’s your test case, Miss Barton, with no personalities attached.”

“Of course one couldn’t do that,” said Miss Barton. “Not for ten wives and fifty children.”

“Not for Solomon and all his wives and concubines? I congratulate you, Miss Barton, on striking such a fine, unfeminine note. Will nobody say a word for the women and children?”

(“I knew he was going to be mischievous,” thought Harriet.)

“You’d like to hear it, wouldn’t you?” said Miss Hillyard.

“You’ve got us in a cleft stick,” said the Dean. “If we say it, you can point out that womanliness unfits us for learning; and if we don’t, you can point out that learning makes us unwomanly.”

“Since I can make myself offensive either way,” said Wimsey, “you have nothing to gain by not telling the truth.”

“The truth is,” said Mrs. Goodwin, “that nobody could possibly defend the indefensible.”

“It sounds, anyway, like a manufactured case,” said Miss Allison, briskly. “It could very seldom happen; and if it did-”

“Oh, it happens,” said Miss de Vine. “It has happened. It happened to me. I don’t mind telling you-without names, of course When I was at Flamborough College, examining for the professorial theses in York University there was a man who sent in a very interesting paper on a historical subject. It was a most persuasive piece of argument; only I happened to know that the whole contention was quite untrue, because a letter that absolutely contradicted it was actually in existence in a certain very obscure library in a foreign town. I’d come across it when I was reading up something else. That wouldn’t have mattered, of course. But the internal evidence showed that the man must have had access to that library. So I had to make an inquiry, and I found that he really had been there and must have seen the letter and deliberately suppressed it.”

“But how could you be so sure he had seen the letter?” asked Miss Lydgate anxiously. “He might carelessly have overlooked it. That would be a very different matter.”

“He not only had seen it,” replied Miss de Vine; “he stole it. We made him admit as much. He had come upon that letter when his thesis was nearly complete, and he had no time to re-write it. And it was a great blow to him apart from that, because he had grown enamoured of his own theory and couldn’t bear to give it up.”

“That’s the mark of an unsound scholar, I’m afraid,” said Miss Lydgate in a mournful tone, as one speaks of an incurable cancer.

“But here is the curious thing,” went on Miss de Vine. “He was unscrupulous enough to let the false conclusion stand; but he was too good a historian to destroy the letter. He kept it.”

“You’d think,” said Miss Pyke, “it would be as painful as biting on a sore tooth.”

“Perhaps he had some idea of rediscovering it some day,” said Miss de Vine, “and setting himself right with his conscience. I don’t know, and I don’t think he knew very well himself.”

“What happened to him?” asked Harriet.

“Well, that was the end of him of course. He lost the professorship, naturally, and they took away his M.A. degree as well. A pity, because he was brilliant in his own way-and very good-looking, if that has anything to do with it.”

“Poor man!” said Miss Lydgate. “He must have needed the post very badly.”

“It meant a good deal to him financially. He was married and not well off. I don’t know what became of him. That was about six years ago. He dropped out completely. One was sorry about it, but there it was.”

“You couldn’t possibly have done anything else,” said Miss Edwards.

“Of course not. A man as undependable as that is not only useless, but dangerous. He might do anything.”

“You’d think it would be a lesson to him,” said Miss Hillyard. “It didn’t pay, did it? Say he sacrificed his professional honour for the women and children we hear so much about-but in the end it left him worse off.”

“But that,” said Peter, “was only because he committed the extra sin of being found out.”

“It seems to me,” began Miss Chilperic, timidly-and then stopped.

“Yes?” said Peter.

“Well,” said Miss Chilperic, “oughtn’t the women and children to have a point of view? I mean-suppose the wife knew that her husband had done a thing like that for her, what would she feel about it?”

“That’s a very important point,” said Harriet. “You’d think she’d feel too ghastly for words.”

“It depends,” said the Dean. “I don’t believe nine women out of ten would care a dash.”

“That’s a monstrous thing to say,” cried Miss Hillyard.

“You think a wife might feel sensitive about her husband’s honour-even if it was sacrificed on her account?” said Miss Stevens. “Well-I don’t know.”

“I should think,” said Miss Chilperic, stammering a little in her earnestness, “she would feel like a man who-I mean, wouldn’t it be like living on somebody’s immoral earnings?”

“There,” said Peter, “if I may say so, I think you are exaggerating. The man who does that-if he isn’t too far gone to have any feelings at all-is hit by other considerations, some of which have nothing whatever to do with ethics. But it is extremely interesting that you should make the comparison.” He looked at Miss Chilperic so intently that she blushed.

“Perhaps that was rather a stupid thing to say.”

“No. But if it ever occurs to people to value the honour of the mind equally with the honour of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort-and very different from the kind that is being made at the moment.”

Miss Chilperic looked so much alarmed at the idea of fostering a social revolution that only the opportune entry of two Common Room scouts to remove the coffee-cups and relieve her of the necessity of replying seemed to have saved her from sinking through the floor.

“Well,” said Harriet, “I agree absolutely with Miss Chilperic. If anybody did a dishonourable thing and then said he did it for one’s own sake, it would be the last insult. How could one ever feel the same to him again?”

“Indeed,” said Miss Pyke, “it must surely vitiate the whole relationship.”

“Oh, nonsense!” cried the Dean. “How many women care two hoots about anybody’s intellectual integrity? Only overeducated women like us. So long as the man didn’t forge a check or rob the till or do something socially degrading, most women would think he was perfectly justified. Ask Mrs. Bones the Butcher’s Wife or Miss Tape the Tailor’s Daughter how much they would worry about suppressing a fact in a mouldy old historical thesis.”

“They’d back up their husbands, in any case,” said Miss Allison. “My man, right or wrong, they’d say. Even if he did rob the till.”

“Of course they would,” said Miss Hillyard. “That’s what the man wants. He wouldn’t say thank you for a critic on the hearth.”

“He must have the womanly woman, you think?” said Harriet. “What is it, Annie? My coffee-cup? Here you are… Somebody who will say, ‘The greater the sin the greater the sacrifice-and consequently the greater devotion.’ Poor Miss Schuster-Slatt!… I suppose it is comforting to be told that one is loved whatever one does.”

“Ah, yes,” said Peter, in his reediest wood-wind voice:

“And these say: ‘No more now my knight

Or God’s knight any longer’-you,

Being than they so much more white,

So much more pure and good and true

Will cling to me for ever-

William Morris had his moments of being a hundred-percent manly man.”

“Poor Morris!” said the Dean.

“He was young at the time,” said Peter, indulgently. “It’s odd, when you come to think of it, that the expressions ‘manly’ and ‘womanly’ should be almost more offensive than their opposites. One is tempted to believe that there may be something indelicate about sex after all.”

“It all comes of this here eddication,” pronounced the Dean, as the door shut behind the last of the coffee-service. “Here we sit round in a ring dissociating ourselves from kind Mrs. Bones and that sweet girl, Miss Tape-”

“Not to mention,” put in Harriet, “those fine, manly fellows, the masculine Tapes and Boneses-”

“ And clacking on in the most unwomanly manner about intellectual integrity.”

“While I,” said Peter, “sit desolate in the midst, like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.”

“You look it,” said Harriet, laughing. “The sole relic of humanity in a cold, bitter and indigestible wilderness.”

There was a laugh, and a momentary silence. Harriet could feel a nervous tension in the room-little threads of anxiety and expectation strung out, meeting, crossing, quivering. Now, they were all saying to themselves, now something is going to be said about IT. The ground has been surveyed, the coffee has been cleared out of the road, the combatants are stripped for action-now, this amiable gentleman with the well-filed tongue will come out in his true colours as an inquisitor, and it is all going to be very uncomfortable.

Lord Peter took out his handkerchief, polished his monocle carefully, readjusted it, looked rather severely at the Warden, and lifted up his voice in emphatic, pained and querulous complaint about the Corporation dump.

The Warden had gone, expressing courteous thanks to Miss Lydgate for the hospitality of the Senior Common Room, and graciously inviting his lordship to call upon her in her own house at any convenient time during his stay in Oxford. Various dons rose up and drifted away, murmuring that they had essays to look through before they went to bed. The talk had ranged pleasantly over a variety of topics. Peter had let the reins drop from his hands and let it go whither it would, and Harriet, realizing this, had scarcely troubled to follow it. In the end, there remained only herself and Peter, the Dean, Miss Edwards (who seemed to have taken a strong fancy to Peter’s conversation), Miss Chilperic, silent and half-hidden in an obscure position and, rather to Harriet’s surprise, Miss Hillyard.

The clocks struck eleven. Wimsey roused himself and said he thought he had better be getting along. Everybody rose. The Old Quad was dark, except for the glean of lighted windows; the sky had clouded, and a rising wind stirred the boughs of the beech-trees.

“Well, good-night,” said Miss Edwards. “I’ll see that you get a copy of that paper about blood-groups. I think you’ll find it of interest.”

“I shall, indeed,” said Wimsey. “Thank you very much.”

Miss Edwards strode briskly away.

“Good-night, Lord Peter.”

“Good-night, Miss Chilperic. Let me know when the social revolution is about to begin and I’ll come to die upon the barricades.”

“I think you would,” said Miss Chilperic, astonishingly, and, in defiance of tradition, gave him her hand.

“Good-night,” said Miss Hillyard, to the world in general, and whisked quickly past them with her head high.

Miss Chilperic flitted off into the darkness like a pale moth, and the Dean said, “Well!” And then, interrogatively, “Well?”

“Pass, and all’s well,” said Peter, placidly.

“There were one or two moments, weren’t there?” said the Dean. “But on the whole-as well as could be expected.”

“I enjoyed myself very much,” said Peter, with the mischievous note back in his voice.

“I bet you did,” said the Dean. “I wouldn’t trust you a yard. Not a yard.”

“Oh, yes, you would,” said he. “Don’t worry.”

The Dean, too, was gone.

“You left your gown in my room yesterday,” said Harriet “You’d better come and fetch it.”

“I brought yours back with me and left it at the Jowett Walk Lodge. Also your dossier. I expect they’ve been taken up.”

“You didn’t leave the dossier lying about!”

“What do you take me for? It’s wrapped up and sealed.”

They crossed the quad slowly.

“There are a lot of questions I want to ask, Peter.”

“Oh, yes. And there’s one I want to ask you. What is your second name? The one that begins with a D?”

“Deborah, I’m sorry to say. Why?”

“Deborah? Well, I’m damned. All right. I won’t call you by it. There’s Miss de Vine, I see, still working.”

The curtains of the Fellows’ window were drawn back this time, and they could see her dark, untidy head, bent over a book.

“She interests me very much,” said Peter.

“I like her, you know.”

“So do I.”

“But I’m afraid those are her kind of hairpins.”

“I know they are,” said he. He took his hand from his pocket and held it out. They were close under Tudor, and the light from an adjacent window showed a melancholy, spraddle-legged hairpin lying across his palm. “She shed this on the dais after dinner. You saw me pick it up.”

“I saw you pick up Miss Shaw’s scarf.”

“Always the gentleman. May I come up with you, or is that against the regulations?”

“You can come up.”

There were a number of students scurrying about the corridors in undress, who looked at Peter with more curiosity than annoyance. In Harriet’s room, they found her gown lying on the table, together with the dossier. Peter picked up the book, examined the paper and string and the seals which secured them, each one stamped with the crouching cat and arrogant Wimsey motto.

“If that’s been opened, I’ll make a meal of hot sealing wax.”

He went to the window and looked out into the quad.

“Not a bad observation post-in its way. Thanks. That’s all I wanted to look at.”

He showed no further curiosity, but took the gown she handed to him and followed her downstairs again.

They were half-way across the quad when he said suddenly:

“Harriet. Do you really prize honesty above every other thing?”

“I think I do. I hope so. Why?”

“If you don’t, I am the most blazing fool in Christendom. I am busily engaged in sawing off my own branch. If I am honest, I shall probably lose you altogether. If I am not-”

His voice was curiously rough, as though he were trying to control something; not, she thought, bodily pain or passion, but something more fundamental.

“If you are not,” said Harriet, “then I shall lose you, because you wouldn’t be the same person, should you?”

“I don’t know. I have a reputation for flippant insincerity. You think I’m honest?”

“I know you are. I couldn’t imagine your being anything else.”

“And yet at this moment I’m trying to insure myself against the effects of my own honesty. ‘I have tried if I could reach that great resolution, to be honest without a thought of heaven or hell.’ It looks as though I should get hell either way, though; so I need scarcely bother about the resolution. I believe you mean what you say-and I hope I should do the same thing if I didn’t believe a word of it.”

“Peter, I haven’t an idea what you’re talking about.”

“All the better. Don’t worry. I won’t behave like this another time. ‘The Duke drained a dipper of brandy-and-water and became again the perfect English gentleman.’ Give me your hand.”

She gave it to him, and he held it for a moment in a firm clasp, and then drew her arm through his. They moved on into the New Quad, arm in arm, in silence. As they passed the archway at the foot of the Hall stairs, Harriet fancied she heard somebody stir in the darkness and saw the faint glimmer of a watching face; but it was gone before she could draw Peter’s attention to it. Padgett unlocked the gate for them; Wimsey, stepping preoccupied over the threshold, tossed him a heedless goodnight.

“Good-night, Major Wimsey, sir!”

“Hullo!” Peter brought back the foot that was already in St. Cross Road, and looked closely into the porter’s smiling face.

“My God, yes! Stop a minute. Don’t tell me. Caudry-1918-I’ve got it! Padgett’s the name. Corporal Padgett.”

“Quite right, sir.”

“Well, well, well. I’m damned glad to see you. Looking dashed fit, too. How are you keeping?”

“Fine, thank you, sir.” Padgett’s large and hairy paw closed warmly over Peter’s long fingers. “I says to my wife, when I ’eard you was ’ere, ‘I’ll lay you anything you like,’ I says, ‘the Major won’t have forgotten.’”

“By Jove, no. Fancy finding you here! Last time I saw you, I was being carried away on a stretcher.”

“That’s right, sir. I ’ad the pleasure of ’elping to dig you out.”

“I know you did. I’m glad to see you now, but I was a dashed sight gladder to see you then.”

“Yes, sir. Gorblimey, sir-well, there! We thought you was gone that time. I says to Hackett-remember little Hackett, sir?”

“the little red-headed blighter? Yes, of course. What’s become of him?”

“Driving a lorry over at Reading, sir, married and three kids. I says to Hackett, ‘Lor’ lumme!’ I says, ‘there’s old Winderpane gawn’-excuse me, sir-and he says, ‘ ’Ell! wot ruddy luck!’ So I says, ‘Don’t stand there grizzlin’-maybe ’e ain’t gawn after all.’ So we-”

“No,” said Wimsey. “I fancy I was more frightened than hurt. Unpleasant sensation, being buried alive.”

“Well, sir! W’en we finds yer there at the bottom o’ that there old Boche dug-out with a big beam acrost yer, I says to Hackett, ‘Well,’ I says,‘ ’e’s all ’ere, anyhow.’ And he says, ‘Thank gawd for Jerry!’ ’e says-meanin’, if it ’adn’t been for that there dugout-”

“Yes,” said Wimsey, “I had a bit of luck there. We lost poor Mr. Danbury, though.”

“Yes, sir. Bad thing, that was. A nice young gentleman. Ever see anything of Captain Sidgwick nowadays, sir?”

“Oh, yes. I saw him only the other day at the Bellona Club. He’s not very fit these days, I’m sorry to say. Got a dose of gas, you know. Lungs groggy.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir. Remember how put about ’e was over that there pig-”

“Hush, Padgett. The less said about that pig, the better.”

“Yes, sir. Nice bit o’ crackling that pig ’ad on ’im. Coo!” Padgett smacked reminiscent lips. “You ’eard wot ’appened to Sergeant-Major Toop?”

“Toop? No-I’ve quite lost sight of him. Nothing unpleasant, I hope. Best sergeant-major I ever had.”

“Ah, he was a one.” Padgett’s grin widened. “Well, sir, ’e found ’is match all right. Little bit of a thing-no ’igher than that, but, lummy!”

“Go on, Padgett. You don’t say so.”

“Yes, sir. When I was workin’ in the camel ’ouse at the Zoo-”

“Good God, Padgett!”

“Yes, sir-I see them there and we passed the time o’ day. Went round to look ’em up afterwards. Well, there! She give ’im sergeant-major all right. Put ’im through the ’oop proper. You know the old song: Naggin’ at a feller as is six foot three-”

“And her only four foot two! Well, well! How are the mighty fallen! By the bye, I’ll tell you who I ran into the other day-now, this will surprise you-”

The stream of reminiscence ran remorselessly on, till Wimsey, suddenly reminded of his manners, apologized to Harriet and plunged hastily out, with a promise to return for another chat over old times. Padgett, still beaming, swung the heavy gate to, and locked it.

“Ah!” said Padgett, “he ain’t changed much, the major ’asn’t. He was a lot younger then, o’ course-only just gazetted-but he was regular good officer for all that-and a terror for eye-wash. And shavin’-lummy!”

Padgett, supporting himself with one hand against the brickwork of the lodge, appeared lost in the long ago.

“‘Now, men,’ ’e’d say, when we was expectin’ a bit of a strafe, ‘if you gotter face your Maker, fer gawd’s sake, face ’Im with a clean chin.’ Ah! Winderpane, we called ’im, along of the eyeglass, but meanin’ no disrespect. None on us wouldn’t ’ear a word agin ’im. Now, there was a chap came to us from another unit-’ulkin’ foul-mouthed fellow, wot nobody took to much-’Uggins, that was the name, ’Uggins. Well, this bloke thinks ’e’s goin’ to be funny, see-and ’e starts callin’ the major Little Percy, and usin opprobrious epithets-”

Here Padgett paused, to select an epithet fit for a lady’s ear, but, failing, repeated:

“Opprobrious epithets, miss. And I says to ’im-mind you, this was afore I got my stripes; I was jest a private then, same as ’Uggins-I says to ’im, ‘Now, that’s quite enough o’ that.’ And ’e says to me-Well, anyway, the end of it is, we ’ad a lovely scrap, all round the ’ouses.”

“Dear me,” said Harriet.

“Yes, miss. We was in rest at the time, and next morning, when the sergeant-major falls us in for parade-coo, lummy! we was a pair o’ family portraits. The sergeant-major-Sergeant-Major Toop, that was, ’im wot got married like I was sayin’-’e didn’t say nothin’-’e knew. And the adjutant, ’e knew too, and ’e didn’t say nothin’ neither. And blest if, in the middle of it all we don’t see the Major comin’ strollin’ out. So the adjutant forms us up into line, and I stands there at attention, ’oping as ’Uggins’s face looked worse nor what mine did. ‘Mornin’,’ says the Major; and the adjutant and Sergeant Major Toop says, ‘Morning, sir.’ So ’e starts to chat casual-like to the sergeant-major, and I see ’is eye goin’ up and down the line. ‘Sergeant-major!’ says he, all of a sudden. ‘Sir!’ says the sergeant-major. ‘What’s that man there been doin’ to ’imself?’ says ’e, meanin’ me. ‘Sir?’ says the sergeant-major, starin’ at me like ‘e was surprised to see me. ‘Looks as if he’d had a nasty accident,’ says the Major. ‘And what about that other fellow? Don’t like to see that sort of thing. Not smart. Fall ’ em out.’ So the sergeant-major falls us both out. ‘H’m,’ says the Major, ‘I see. What’s this man’s name?’ ‘Padgett, sir,’ says the sergeant-major. ‘Oh,’ says he. ‘Well, Padgett, what have you been doing to get yourself into a mess like that?’ ‘Fell over a bucket, sir,’ says I, starin’ ’ard over ’is shoulder with the only eye I could see out of, ‘Bucket?’ says ’e, ‘very awkward things, buckets. And this other man-I suppose he trod on the mop, eh, sergeant-major?’ ‘Major wants to know if you trod on the mop,’ says Sergeant-Major Toop. ‘Yessir,’ says ’Uggins, talkin’ like ’is mouth ’urt ’im. ‘Well,’ says the Major, ‘when you’ve got this lot dismissed, give these two men a bucket and a mop apiece and put ’em on fatigue. That’ll learn ’em to ’andle these dangerous implements.’ ‘Yessir,’ says Sergeant-Major Toop. ‘Carry on,’ says the Major. So we carries on. ’Uggins says to me arterwards, ‘D’you think ’e knew?’ ‘Knew?’ says I, ‘course ’e knew. Ain’t much ’e don’t know.’ Arter that, ’Uggins kep’ ’is epithets to ’isself.”

Harriet expressed due appreciation of this anecdote, which was delivered with a great deal of gusto, and took leave of Padgett. For some reason, this affair of a mop and a bucket seemed to have made Padgett Peter’s slave for life. Men were very odd.

There was nobody under the Hall arches as she returned, but as she passed the West end of the Chapel, she thought she saw something dark pass like a shadow into the Fellows’ Garden. She followed it. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the dimness of the summer night and she could see the figure walking swiftly up and down, up and down, and hear the rustle of its long skirt upon the grass.

There was only one person in College who had worn a trailing frock that evening, and that was Miss Hillyard. She walked in the Fellows’ Garden for an hour and a half.