Dorothy Sayers - Gaudy Night

She suddenly burst out crying-half dreadful and half grotesque, with her cap crooked and her hands twisting her apron into a knot.

“For Heaven’s sake,” muttered the Dean, desperately, “can’t this be stopped?”

Here Miss Barton got up.

“Come, Annie,” she said, briskly. “We are all very sorry for you, but you mustn’t behave in this foolish and hysterical way. What would the children think if they saw you now? You had better come and lie down quietly and take some aspirin. Bursar! will you please help me out with her?”

Miss Stevens, galvanized, got up and took Annie’s other arm, and all three went out together. The Warden turned to Peter, who stood mechanically wiping his face with his handkerchief and looking at nobody.

“I apologize for allowing this scene to take place, I ought to have known better. You were perfectly right.”

“Of course he was right!” cried Harriet. Her head was throbbing like an engine. “He’s always right. He said it was dangerous to care for anybody. He said love was a brute and a devil. You’re honest, Peter, aren’t you? Damned honest-Oh, God! let me get out of here. I’m going to be sick.”

She stumbled blindly against him as he held the door open for her, and he had to steer her with a firm hand to the cloak-room door. When he came back, the Warden had risen, and the dons with her. They looked stupefied with the shock of seeing so many feelings stripped naked in public.

“Of course, Miss de Vine,” the Warden was saying, “no sane person could possibly think of blaming you.”

“Thank you. Warden,” said Miss de Vine. “Nobody, perhaps, but myself.”

“Lord Peter,” said the Warden, “a little later on, when we are all feeling more ourselves, I think we should all like to say-”

“Please don’t,” said he. “It doesn’t matter at all.”

The Warden went out, and the rest followed her like mutes at a funeral, leaving only Miss de Vine, sitting solitary beneath the window. Peter shut the door after them and came up to her. He was still passing his handkerchief across his mouth. Becoming aware of this, he tossed the linen into the wastepaper basket.

“I do blame myself,” said Miss de Vine, less to him than to herself. “Most bitterly. Not for my original action, which was unavoidable, but for the sequel. Nothing you can say to me could make me feel more responsible than I do already.”

“I can have nothing to say,” said he. “Like you and every member of this Common Room, I admit the principle and the consequences must follow.”

“That won’t do,” said the Fellow, bluntly. “One ought to take some thought for other people. Miss Lydgate would have done what I did in the first place; but she would have made it her business to see what became of that unhappy man and his wife.”

“Miss Lydgate is a very great and a very rare person. But she could not prevent other people from suffering for her principles. That seems to be what principles are for, somehow… I don’t claim, you know,” he added, with something of his familiar diffidence, “to be a Christian or anything of that kind. But there’s one thing in the Bible that seems to me to be a mere statement of brutal fact-I mean, about bringing not peace but a sword.”

Miss de Vine looked up at him curiously.

“How much are you going to suffer for this?”

“God knows,” he said. “That’s my lookout. Perhaps not at all. In any case, you know, I’m with you-every time.”

When Harriet emerged from the cloak-room, she found Miss de Vine alone.

“Thank Heaven, they’ve gone,” said Harriet. “I’m afraid I made an exhibition of myself. It was rather-shattering, wasn’t it? What’s happened to Peter?”

“He’s gone,” said Miss de Vine.

She hesitated, and then said:

“Miss Vane-I’ve no wish to pry impertinently into your affairs. Stop me if I am saying too much. But we have talked a good deal about facing the facts. Isn’t it time you faced the facts about that man?”

“I have been facing one fact for some time,” said Harriet, staring out with unseeing eyes into the quad, “and that is, that if I once gave way to Peter, I should go up like straw.”

“That,” said Miss de Vine, drily, “is moderately obvious. How often has he used that weapon against you?”

“Never,” said Harriet, remembering the moments when he might have used it. “Never.”

“Then what are you afraid of? Yourself?”

“Isn’t this afternoon warning enough?”

“Perhaps. You have had the luck to come up against a very unselfish and a very honest man. He has done what you asked him without caring what it cost him and without shirking the issue. He hasn’t tried to disguise the facts or bias your judgment. You admit that, at any rate.”

“I suppose he realized how I should feel about it?”

“Realized it?” said Miss de Vine, with a touch of irritation. “My dear girl, give him the credit for the brains he’s got. They are very good ones. He is painfully sensitive and far more intelligent than is good for him. But I really don’t think you can go on like this. You won’t break his patience or his control or his spirit; but you may break his health. He looks like a person pushed to the last verge of endurance.”

“He’s been rushing about and working very hard,” said Harriet, defensively. “I shouldn’t be at all a comfortable person for him to live with. I’ve got a devilish temper.”

“Well, that’s his risk, if he likes to take it. He doesn’t seem to lack courage.”

“I should only make his life a misery.”

“Very well. If you are determined that you’re not fit to black his boots, tell him so and send him away.”

“I’ve been trying to send Peter away for five years. It doesn’t have that effect on him.”

“If you had really tried, you could have sent him away in five minutes… Forgive me. I don’t suppose you’ve had a very easy time with yourself. But it can’t have been easy for him, either-looking on at it, and quite powerless to interfere.”

“Yes. I almost wish he had interfered, instead of being so horribly intelligent. It would be quite a relief to be ridden over rough-shod for a change.”

“He will never do that. That’s his weakness. He’ll never make up your mind for you. You’ll have to make your own decisions. You needn’t be afraid of losing your independence; he will always force it back on you. If you ever find any kind of repose with him, it can only be the repose of very delicate balance.”

“That’s what he says himself. If you were me, should you like to marry a man like that?”

“Frankly,” said Miss de Vine, “I should not. I would not do it for any consideration. A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity. You can hurt one another so dreadfully.”

“I know. And I don’t think I can stand being hurt any more.”

“Then,” said Miss de Vine, “I suggest that you stop hurting other people. Face the facts and state a conclusion. Bring a scholar’s mind to the problem and have done with it.”

“I believe you’re quite right,” said Harriet. “I will. And that reminds me. Miss Lydgate’s History of Prosody was marked PRESS with her own hand this morning. I fled with it and seized on a student to take it down to the printers. I’m almost positive I heard a faint voice crying from the window about a footnote on page 97-but I pretended not to hear.”

“Well,” said Miss de Vine, laughing, “thank goodness, that piece of scholarship has achieved a result at last!”