On no other occasion had Harriet ever passed his threshold. Nor had he ever violated the seclusion of Mecklenburg Square. Two or three times, courtesy had moved her to invite him in, but he had always made some excuse, and she understood that he was determined to leave her that place, at least, free from any awkward associations. It was clear that he had no fatuous intention of making himself more valued by withdrawal: he had rather the air of trying to make amends for something. He renewed his offer of marriage on an average once in three months, but in such a way as to afford no excuse for any outbreak of temperament on either side. One First of April, the question had arrived from Paris in a single Latin sentence, starting on dispiritedly. “Num…?”-a particle which notoriously “expects the answer No.” Harriet rummaging the Grammar book for “polite negatives,” replied, still more briefly, “Benigne.”
Looking back upon her visit to Oxford, Harriet found that it had had an unsettling effect. She had begun to take Wimsey for granted, as one might take dynamite for granted in a munitions factory. But the discovery that the sound of his name still had the power to provoke such explosions in herself-that she could so passionately resent, at one and the same time, the praise or blame of him on other people’s lips-awakened a misgiving that dynamite was perhaps still dynamite, however harmless it might come to look through long custom.
On the mantelpiece of her sitting-room stood a note, in Peter’s small and rather difficult writing. It informed her that he had been called away by Chief-Inspector Parker, who was in difficulties over a murder in the north of England. He must therefore regretfully cancel their appointment for that week. Could she oblige him by making use of the tickets, of which he had no time to dispose otherwise?
Harriet pinched her lips over that last cautious sentence. Ever since one frightful occasion, during the first year of their acquaintance, when he had ventured to send her a Christmas present and she, in an access of mortified pride, had returned it to him with a stinging rebuke, he had been careful never to offer her anything that could possibly be looked upon as a material gift. Had he been wiped out of existence at any moment, there was nothing among her possessions to remind her of him. She now took up the tickets and hesitated over them. She could give them away, or she could go herself and take a friend. On the whole, she thought she would rather not sit through the performance with a kind of Banquo’s ghost disputing possession of the next stall with somebody else. She put the tickets in an envelope, dispatched them to the married couple who had taken her to Ascot, and then tore the note across and deposited it in the wastepaper basket. Having thus disposed of Banquo, she breathed more freely, and turned to deal with the day’s next nuisance.
This was the revision of three other books for a new edition. The rereading of one’s own works is usually a dismal matter; and when she had completed her task she felt thoroughly jaded and displeased with herself. The cooks were all right, as far as they went; as intellectual exercises, they were even brilliant. But there was something lacking about them; they read now to her as though they had been written with a mental reservation, a determination to keep her own opinions and personality out of view. She considered with distaste a clever and superficial discussion between two of the characters about married life. She could have made a much better thing of that, if she had not been afraid of giving herself away. What hampered her was this sense of being in the middle of things, too close to things, pressed upon and bullied by reality. If she could succeed in standing aside from herself she would achieve self-confidence and a better control. That was the great possession in which-with all his limitations-the scholar could account himself blessed: the single eye, directed to the object, not dimmed nor distracted by private motes and beams. “Private, indeed?” muttered Harriet to herself, as she smacked her proofs irritably into brown paper.
“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.”