23

There was no word from Peter in the morning. The Warden issued a brief and discreet announcement to the College that the offender had been traced and the trouble ended. The Senior Common Room, recovering a little from its shock, went quietly about the business of the term. They were all normal again. They had never been anything else. Now that the distorting-glass of suspicion was removed, they were kindly, intelligent human beings-not seeing, perhaps, very much farther beyond their own interests than the ordinary man beyond his job or the ordinary woman beyond her own household-but as understandable and pleasant as daily bread.

Harriet, having got Miss Lydgate’s proofs off her mind, and feeling that she could not brace herself to deal with Wilfrid, took her notes on Le Fanu, and went down to put in a little solid work at the Camera.

Shortly before noon, a hand touched her shoulder.

“They told me you were here,” said Peter. “Can you spare a moment? We can go up on to the roof.”

Harriet put down her pen and followed him across the circular chamber with its desks full of silent readers.

“I understand,” he said, pushing open the swing-door that leads to the winding staircase, “that the problem is being medically dealt with.”

“Oh, yes. When the academic mind has really grasped a hypothesis-which may take a little time-it copes with great thoroughness and efficiency. Nothing will be overlooked.”

They climbed in silence, and came out at length through the little turret upon the gallery of the Camera. The previous day’s rain had passed and left the sun shining upon a shining city. Stepping cautiously over the slatted flooring towards the south-east segment of the circle, they were a little surprised to come upon Miss Cattermole and Mr. Pomfret, who were seated side by side upon a stone projection and rose as they approached, in a flutter, like daws disturbed from a belfry.

“Don’t move,” said Wimsey, graciously. “Plenty of room for all of us.”

“It’s quite all right, sir,” said Mr. Pomfret. “We were just going. Really. I’ve got a lecture at twelve.”

“Dear me!” said Harriet, watching them disappear into the turret. But Peter had already lost interest in Mr. Pomfret and his affairs. He was leaning with his elbows on the parapet, looking down into Cat Street. Harriet joined him.

There, eastward, within a stone’s throw, stood the twin towers of All Souls, fantastic, unreal as a house of cards, clear-cut in the sunshine, the drenched oval in the quad beneath brilliant as an emerald in the bezel of a ring. Behind them, black and grey, New College frowning like a fortress, with dark wings wheeling about her belfry louvres; and Queen’s with her dome of green copper; and, as the eye turned southward, Magdalen, yellow and slender, the tall lily of towers; the Schools and the battlemented front of University; Merton, square-pinnacled, half-hidden behind the shadowed North side and mounting spire of St. Mary’s. Westward again, Christ Church, vast between Cathedral spire and Tom Tower; Brasenose close at hand; St. Aldate’s and Carfax beyond; spire and tower and quadrangle, all Oxford springing underfoot in living leaf and enduring stone, ringed far off by her bulwark of blue hills.

Towery City, and branchy between towers,

Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmd, lark-charmed, rook-racked, river rounded,

The dapple-eared lily below.

“Harriet,” said Peter; ‘I want to ask your forgiveness for these last five years.”

“I think,” said Harriet, “it ought to be the other way round.”

“I think not. When I remember how we first met-”

“Peter, don’t think about that ghastly time. I was sick of myself, body and soul. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“And I chose that time, when I should have thought only of you, to thrust myself upon you, to make demands of you, like a damned arrogant fool-as though I had only to ask and have. Harriet, I ask you to believe that, whatever it looked like, my blundering was nothing worse than vanity and a blind, childish impatience to get my own way.”

She shook her head, finding no words.

“I had found you,” he vent on, a little more quietly, “beyond all hope or expectation, at a time when I thought no woman could ever mean anything to me beyond a little easy sale and exchange of pleasure. And I was so terrified of losing you before I could grasp you that I babbled out all my greed and fear as though, God help me, you had nothing to think of but me and my windy self-importance. As though it mattered. As though the very word of love had not been the most crashing insolence a man could offer you.”

“No, Peter. Never that.”

“My dear-you showed me what you thought of me when you said you would live with me but not marry me.”

“Don’t. I am ashamed of that.”

“Not so bitterly ashamed as I have been. If you knew how I have tried to forget it. I told myself that you were only afraid of the social consequences of marriage. I comforted myself with pretending that it showed you liked me a little. I bolstered up my conceit for months, before I would admit the humiliating truth that I ought to have known from the beginning-that you were so sick of my pestering that you would have thrown yourself to me as one throws a bone to a dog, to stop the brute from yelping.”

“Peter, that isn’t true. It was myself I was sick of. How could I give you base coin for a marriage-portion?”

“At least I had the decency to know that I couldn’t take it in settlement of a debt. But I have never dared to tell you what that rebuke meant to me, when at last I saw it for what it was… Harriet; I have nothing much in the way of religion, or even morality, but I do recognize a code of behaviour of sorts. I do know that the worst sin-perhaps the only sin-passion can commit, is to be joyless. It must lie down with laughter or make its bed in hell-there is no middle way… Don’t misunderstand me. I have bought it, often-but never by forced sale or at ‘stupendous sacrifice.’… Don’t, for God’s sake, ever think you owe me anything. If I can’t have the real thing, I can make do with the imitation. But I will not have surrenders or crucifixions… If you have come to feel any kindness for me at all, tell me that you would never make me that offer again.”

“Not for anything in the world. Not now or at any time since. It isn’t only that I have found a value for myself. But when I made you the offer, it meant nothing to me-now it would mean something.”

“If you have found your own value,” he said, “that is immeasurably the greatest thing… It has taken me a long time to learn my lesson, Harriet. I have had to pull down, brick by brick, the barriers I had built up by my own selfishness and folly. If, in all these years, I have managed to get back to the point at which I ought to have started, will you tell me so and give me leave to begin again? Once or twice in the last few days I have fancied that you might feel as though this unhappy interval might be wiped out and forgotten.”

“No; not that. But as though I could be glad to remember it.”

“Thank you. That is far more than I expected or deserved.”

“Peter-it’s not fair to let you talk like this. It’s I who ought to apologize. If I owe you nothing else, I owe you my self-respect. And I owe you my life-”

“Ah!” said he, smiling. “But I have given you that back by letting you risk it. That was the last kick that sent my vanity out of doors.”