Dorothy Sayers - Gaudy Night

“Well, I knew you would hate it so. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Didn’t want to hurt me?”

She realized that this, to him, must sound completely lunatic.

“I mean that, Peter. I know I’ve said about every damnable thing to you that I could think of. But I have my limits.” A sudden wave of anger surged up in her. “My God, do you really think that of me? Do you suppose there’s no meanness I wouldn’t stoop to?”

“You’d have been perfectly justified in telling me that I was making things more difficult for you by hanging round.”

“Should I? Did you expect me to tell you that you were compromising my reputation, when I had none to compromise? To point out that you’d saved me from the gallows, thank you very much, but left me in the pillory? To say, my name’s mud, but kindly treat it as lilies? I’m not quite such a hypocrite as that.”

“I see. The plain fact is, that I am doing nothing but make life a little bitterer for you. It was generous of you not to say so.”

“Why did you insist on seeing that thing?”

“Because,” he said, striking a match and holding the flame to a corner of the postcard, “while I am quite ready to take flight from plug-uglies with guns, I prefer to look other kinds of trouble in the face.” He dropped the burning paper on to the tray and crushed the ashes together, and she was again reminded of the message she had found in her sleeve. “You have nothing to reproach yourself with-you didn’t tell me this; I found it out for myself. I will admit defeat and say good-bye. Shall I?”

The club waiter set down the brandies. Harriet, with her eyes on her own hands, sat plaiting her fingers together. Peter watched her for some minutes, and then said gently:

“Don’t look so tragic about it. The coffee’s getting cold. After all, you know, I have the consolation that ‘not you but Fate has vanquished me’. I shall emerge with my vanity intact, and that’s something.”

“Peter. I’m afraid I’m not very consistent. I came here tonight with the firm intention of telling you to chuck it. But I’d rather fight my own battles. I-I-” she looked up and went on rather quaveringly-“I’m damned if I’ll have you wiped out by plug-uglies or anonymous letter writers!”

He sat up sharply, so that his exclamation of pleasure turned half-way into an anguished grunt.

“Oh curse this sticking-plaster!… Harriet, you have got guts, haven’t you? Give me your hand, and we’ll fight on until we drop. Here! none of that. You can’t cry in this club. It’s never been done, and if you disgrace me like this, I shall get into a row with the Committee. They’ll probably close the Ladies’ Rooms altogether.”

“I’m sorry, Peter.”

“And don’t put sugar in my coffee.”

Later in the evening, having lent a strong arm to extricate him, swearing loudly, from the difficult depths of the couch, and dispatched him to such rest as he might reasonably look for between the pains of love and sticking-plaster she had leisure to reflect that if fate had vanquished either of them it was not Peter Wimsey. He knew too well the wrestler’s trick of letting the adversary’s own strength defeat itself. Yet she knew with certainty that if, when he had said, “Shall I go?” she had replied with firm kindness, “I’m sorry, but I think it would better,” there would have been the desired end of the matter.

“I wish,” she said to the friend of the European trip, “he would take a firm line of some kind.”

“But he has,” replied the friend, who was a clear-headed person. “He knows what he wants. The trouble is that you don’t. I know it isn’t pleasant putting an end to things, but I don’t see why he should do all your dirty work for you, particularly as he doesn’t want it done. As for anonymous letters, it seems to me quite ridiculous to pay any attention to them.”

It was easy for the friend to say this, having no vulnerable points in her brisk and hard-working life.

“Peter says I ought to get a secretary and have them weeded out.”

“Well,” said the friend, “that’s a practical suggestion, anyway. But I suppose, since it’s his advice, you’ll find some ingenious reason for not taking it.”

“I’m not as bad as that,” said Harriet; and engaged the secretary.

So matters went on for some months. She made no further effort to discuss the conflicting claims of heart and brain. That line of talk led to a perilous exchange of personalities, in which he, with a livelier wit and better self-control, could always drive her into a corner without exposing himself. It was only by sheer brutal hacking that she could beat down his guard; and she was beginning to be afraid of those impulses to savagery.

She heard no news of Shrewsbury College in the interval, except that one day in the Michaelmas Term there was a paragraph in one of the more foolish London dailies about an “Undergraduettes’ Rag,” informing the world that somebody had made a bonfire of gowns in Shrewsbury Quad and that the “Lady Head” was said to be taking disciplinary measures. Women, of course, were always news. Harriet wrote a tart letter to the paper, pointing out that either “undergraduate” or “woman student” would be seemlier English than “undergraduette,” and that the correct method of describing Dr. Baring was “the Warden.” The only result of this was to provoke a correspondence headed “Lady Undergrads,” and a reference to “sweet girl-graduates.”

She informed Wimsey-who happened to be the nearest male person handy for scarifying-that this kind of vulgarity was typical of the average man’s attitude to women’s intellectual interests. He replied that bad manners always made him sick; but was it any worse than headlining foreign monarchs by their Christian names, untitled?

About three weeks before the end of the Easter term, however, Harriet’s attention was again called to college affairs in a way that was more personal and more disquieting.

February was sobbing and blustering its lachrymose way into March when she received a letter from the Dean.

My dear Miss Vane,

I am writing to ask you whether you will be able to get up to Oxford for the opening of the New Library Wing by the Chancellor next Thursday. This, as you know, has always been the date for the official opening, though we had hoped that the buildings themselves would be ready for habitation at the beginning of this term. However what with a dispute in the contractors’ firm, and the unfortunate illness of the architect, we got badly held up, so that we shall only just be ready in time. In fact, the interior decoration of the ground floor isn’t finished yet.-Still, we couldn’t very well ask Lord Oakapple to change the date, as he is such a busy man; and after all, the Library is the chief thing, and not the Fellows’ sets, however badly they may need a home to go to, poor dears.

We are particularly anxious-I am speaking for Dr. Baring as well as myself-that you should come, if you can manage to find time (though of course you have a lot of engagements). We should be very glad to have your advice about a most unpleasant thing that has been happening here. Not that one expects a detective novelist to be a practical policeman; but I know you have taken part in one real investigation, and I feel sure you know a lot more than we do about tracking down malefactors.

Don’t think we are all getting murdered in our beds! In some ways I’m not sure that a “nice, clean murder” wouldn’t be easier to deal with! The fact is, we are being victimized by a cross between a Poltergeist and a Poison-Pen, and you can imagine how disgusting it is for everybody. It seems that the letters started coming some time ago, but at first nobody took much notice. I suppose everyone gets vulgar anonymous communications from time to time; and though some of the beastly things didn’t come by post, there’s nothing in a place like this to prevent an outsider from dropping them at the Lodge or even inside the College. But wanton destruction of property is a different matter, and the last outbreak has been so abominable that something really must be done about it. Poor Miss Lydgate’s English Prosody-you saw that colossal work in progress-has been defaced and mutilated in the most revolting manner, and some important manuscript portions completely destroyed, so that they will have to be done all over again. She was almost in tears, poor dear-and the alarming thing is that it now looks as though somebody in college must be responsible. We suppose that some student must have a grudge against the S.C.R.-but it must be more than a grudge-it must be a very horrid kind of pottiness.