Dorothy Sayers - Gaudy Night

“You not alone, when you are still alone,

O God, from you that I could private be!”

She was exceedingly glad that she had got rid of the theatre tickets.

So that when Wimsey eventually got back from his expedition north, she went to meet him in a belligerent spirit. He had asked her to dine with him, this time, at the Egotists’ Club-an unusual venue. It was a Sunday night and they had the room to themselves. She mentioned her Oxford visit and took the opportunity to recite to him a list of promising scholars, distinguished their studies and subsequently extinguished by matrimony. He agreed mildly that such things did happen, far too often, and instanced a very brilliant painter who, urged on by a socially ambitious wife, had now become a slick machine for the production of Academy portraits.

“Sometimes, of course,” he went on dispassionately, “the partner is merely jealous or selfish. But half the time it’s sheer stupidity. They don’t mean it. It’s surprisin‘ how few people ever mean anything definite from one year’s end to the other.”

“I don’t think they could help it, whatever they meant. It’s the pressure of other people’s personalities that does the mischief.”

“Yes. Best intentions no security. They never are, of course. You may say you won’t interfere with another person’s soul, but you do-merely by existing. The snag about it is the practical difficulty, so to speak, of not existing. I mean, here we all are, you know, and what are we to do about it?”

“Well, I suppose some people feel themselves called to make personal relationships their life-work. If so, it’s all right for them. But what about the others?”

“Tiresome, isn’t it?” he said, with a gleam of amusement that annoyed her. “Do you think they ought to cut out human contacts altogether? It’s not easy. There’s always the butcher or the baker or the landlady or somebody one has to wrestle with. Or should the people with brains sit tight and let the people with hearts look after them?”

“They frequently do.”

“So they do.” For the fifth time he summoned the waiter to pick up Harriet’s napkin for her. “Why do geniuses make bad husbands, and all that? But what are you going to do about the people who are cursed with both hearts and brains?”

“I’m sorry I keep on dropping things; this silk’s so slippery. Well, that’s just the problem, isn’t it? I’m beginning to believe they’ve got to choose.”

“Not compromise?”

“I don’t think the compromise works.”

“That I should live to hear any person of English blood blaspheme against compromise!”

“Oh, I’m not all English. I’ve got some bits of Scotch and Irish tucked away somewhere.”

“That proves you’re English. No other race ever boasts of being mongrel. I’m quite offensively English myself, because I’m one-sixteenth French, besides all the usual nationalities. So that compromise is in my blood. However. Should you catalogue me as a heart or a brain?”

“Nobody,” said Harriet, “could deny your brain.”

“Who déniges of it? And you may deny my heart, but I’m damned if you shall deny its existence.”

“You argue like an Elizabethan wit-two meanings under one word.”

“It was your word. You will have to deny something, if you intend to be like Caesar’s sacrifice.”

“Caesar’s…?”

“A beat without a heart. Has your napkin gone again?”

“No-it’s my bag this time. It’s just under your left foot.”

“Oh!” He looked round, but the waiter had vanished. “Well,” he went on, without moving, “it is the heart’s office to wait upon the brain, but in view f-”

“Please don’t trouble,” said Harriet, “it doesn’t matter in the least.”

“In view of the fact that I’ve got two cracked ribs, I’d better not try; because if once got down I should probably never get up again.”

“Good gracious!” said Harriet. “I thought you seemed a little stiff in your manner. Why on earth didn’t you say so before, instead of sitting there like a martyr and inveigling me into misjudging you?”

“I don’t seem able to do anything right,” he said plaintively.

“How did you manage to do it?”

“Fell off a wall in the most inartistic manner. I was in a bit of a hurry; there was a very plain-looking bloke on the other side with a gun. It wasn’t so much the wall, as the wheelbarrow at the bottom. And it isn’t really so much the ribs as the sticking-plaster. It’s strapped as tight as hell and itches infernally.”

“How beastly for you. I’m so sorry. What became of the bloke with the gun?”

“Ah! I’m afraid personal complications won’t trouble him any longer.”

“If the luck had been the other way, I suppose they wouldn’t have troubled you any longer?”

“Probably not. And then I shouldn’t have troubled you any longer. If my mind had been where my heart was, I might have welcomed that settlement. But my mind being momentarily on my job, I ran away with the greatest rapidity, so as to live to finish the case.”

“Well, I’m glad of that, Peter.”

“Are you? That shows how hard it is for even the most powerful brain to be completely heartless. Let me see. It is not my day for asking you to marry me, and a few yards of sticking plaster are hardly enough to make it a special occasion. But we’ll have coffee in the lounge, if you don’t mind, because this chair is getting as hard as the wheelbarrow, and seems to be catching me in several of the same places.”

He got up cautiously. The waiter arrived and restored Harriet’s bag, together with some letters which she had taken from the postman as she left the house and thrust into the outer pocket of the bag without reading. Wimsey steered his guest into the lounge, established her in a chair and lowered himself with a grimace into one corner of a low couch.

“Rather a long way down, isn’t it?”

“It’s all right when you get there. Sorry to be always presenting myself in such a decrepit state. I do it on purpose, of course, to attract attention and awaken sympathy; but I’m afraid the manoeuvre’s getting rather obvious. Would you like a liqueur with the coffee or a brandy? Two old brandies, James.”

“Very good, my lord. This was found under the table in the dining room, madam.”

“More of your scattered belongings?” said Wimsey, as she took the postcard; then, seeing her flush and frown of disgust, “What is it?”

“Nothing,” said Harriet, pushing the ugly scrawl into her bag.

He looked at her.

“Do you often get that kind of thing?”

“What kind of thing?”

“Anonymous dirt.”

“Not very often now. I got one at Oxford. But they used to come by every post. Don’t worry; I’m used to it. I only wish I’d looked at it before I got here. It’s horrible of me to have dropped it about your club for the servants to read.”

“Careless little devil, aren’t you? May I see it?”

“No, Peter; please.”

“Give it to me.”

She handed it to him without looking up. “Ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup. What did you give him to get you off?” it inquired disagreeably.

“God, what muck!” said he, bitterly. “So that’s what I’m letting you in for I might have known it. I could hardly hope that it wasn’t so. But you said nothing, so I allowed myself to be selfish.”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s just part of the consequences. You can’t do anything about it.”

“I might have the consideration not to expose you to it. Heaven knows you’ve tried hard enough to get rid of me. In fact, I think you’ve used every possible lever to dislodge me, except that one.”