“Well, that’s what I mean. You expend the trouble and you don’t make any mistake-and then you experience the ecstasy. But if there’s any subject in which you’re content with the second-rate, then it isn’t really your subject.”
“You’re dead right,” said Harriet, after a pause. “If one’s genuinely interested one knows how to be patient, and let time pass, as Queen Elizabeth said. Perhaps that’s the meaning of the phrase about genius being eternal patience, which I always thought rather absurd. If you truly want a thing, you don’t snatch; if you snatch, you don’t really want it. Do you suppose that, if you find yourself taking pains about a thing, it’s a proof of its importance to you?”
“I think it is, to a large extent. But the big proof is that the thing comes right, without those fundamental errors. One always makes surface errors, of course. But a fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring. I wish one could teach people nowadays that the doctrine of snatching what one thinks one wants is unsound.”
“I saw six plays this winter in London,” said Harriet, “all preaching the doctrine of snatch. I agree that they left me with the feeling that none of the characters knew what they wanted.”
“No ” said Miss de Vine. “If you are once sure what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller-all other interests, your own and other people’s. Miss Lydgate wouldn’t like my saying that, but it’s as true of her as of anybody else. She’s the kindest soul in the world, in things she’s indifferent about, like the peculations of Jukes. But she hasn’t the slightest mercy on the prosodical theories of Mr. Elkbottom. She wouldn’t countenance those to save Mr. Elkbottom from hanging. She’d say she couldn’t. And she couldn’t, of course. If she actually saw Mr. Elkbottom writhing in humiliation, she’d be sorry but she wouldn’t alter a paragraph. That would be treason. One can’t be pitiful where one’s own job is concerned. You’d lie cheerfully, I expect, about anything except-what?”
“Oh, anything!” said Harriet, laughing. “Except saying that somebody’s beastly book is good when it isn’t. I can’t do that. It makes me a lot of enemies, but I can’t do it.”
“No, one can’t,” said Miss de Vine. “However painful it is, there’s always one thing one has to deal with sincerely, if there’s any root to one’s mind at all. I ought to know, from my own experience. Of course, the one thing may be an emotional thing; I don’t say it mayn’t. One may commit all the sins in the calendar, and still be faithful and honest towards one person. If so, then that one person is probably one’s appointed job. I’m not despising that kind of loyalty; it doesn’t happen to be mine, that is all.”
“Did you discover that by making a fundamental mistake?” asked Harriet, a little nervously.
“Yes,” said Miss de Vine. “I once got engaged to somebody. But I found I was always blundering-hurting his feelings, doing stupid things, making quite elementary mistakes about him. In the end I realized that I simply wasn’t taking as much trouble with him as I should have done over a disputed reading. So I decided he wasn’t my job.” She smiled. “For all that, I was fonder of him than he was of me. He married an excellent woman who is devoted to him and does make him her job. I should think he was a full-time job. He is a painter and usually on the verge of bankruptcy; but he paints very well.”
“I suppose one oughtn’t to marry anybody, unless one’s prepared to make him a full-time job.”
“Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don’t took on themselves as jobs but as fellow-creatures.”
“I should think Phoebe Tucker and her husband were like that,” said Harriet. “You met her at the Gaudy. That collaboration seems to work. But what with the wives who are jealous of their husbands’ work and the husbands who are jealous of their wives’ interests, it looks as though most of us imagined ourselves to be jobs.”
“The worst of being a job,” said Miss de Vine, “is the devastating effect it has on one’s character. I’m very sorry for the person who is somebody else’s job; he (or she, of course) ends by devouring or being devoured, either of which is bad for one. My painter has devoured his wife, though neither of them knows it; and poor Miss Cattermole is in great danger of being identified with her parents’ job and being devoured.”
“Then you’re all for the impersonal job?”
“I am,” said Miss de Vine.
“But you say you don’t despise those who make some other person their job?”
“Far from despising them,” said Miss de Vine; “I think they are dangerous.”
Christ Church,
Friday.
Dear Miss Vane,
If you can forgive my idiotic behaviour the other day, will you come and lunch with me on Monday at 1 o’clock? Please do. I am still feeling suicidal, so it would really be a work of charity all round. I hope the meringues got home safely.
Very sincerely yours,
Saint-George
My dear young man, thought Harriet, as she wrote an acceptance of this naïve invitation, if you think I can’t see through that, you’re mightily mistaken. This is not for me, but for les beaux yeux de la cassette de l’oncle Pierre. But there are worse meals than those that come out of the House kitchen, and I will go. I should like to know how much money you’re managing to get through, by the way. The heir of Denver should be rich enough in his own right without appealing to Uncle Peter. Gracious! when I think that I was given my college fees and my clothes and five pounds a term to make whoopee on! You won’t get much sympathy or support from me, my lord.
Still in this severe mood, she drove down St. Aldate’s on Monday and inquired of the porter beneath Tom Tower for Lord Saint-George; only to be told that Lord Saint-George was not in College.
“Oh!” said Harriet, disconcerted, “but he asked me to lunch.”
“What a pity you weren’t let know, miss. Lord Saint-George was in a nasty motor-accident on Friday night. He’s in the Infirmary. Didn’t you see it in the papers?”
“No, I missed it. Is he badly hurt?”
“Injured his shoulder and cut his head open pretty badly, so we hear,” said the porter, with regret, and yet with a slight relish at the imparting of bad news. “He was unconscious for twenty-four hours; but we are informed that his condition is now improving. The Duke and Duchess have left for the country again.”
“Dear me!” said Harriet. “I’m very sorry to hear this. I’d better go-round and inquire. Do you know whether he is allowed to see anybody yet?”
The porter looked her over with a paternal eye, which somehow suggested to her that if she had been an undergraduate the answer would have been No.
“I believe, miss,” said the porter, “that Mr. Danvers and Lord Warboys were permitted to visit his lordship this morning. I couldn’t say further than that. Excuse me-there is Mr. Danvers just crossing the quadrangle. I will ascertain.”
He emerged from his glass case and pursued Mr. Danvers, who immediately came running to the lodge.
“I say,” said Mr. Danvers, “are you Miss Vane? Because poor old Saint-George has only just remembered about you. He’s terribly sorry, and I was to catch you and give you some grub. No trouble at all-a great pleasure. We ought to have let you know, but he was knocked clean out, poor old chap. Ad then, what with the family fussing round-do you know the Duchess?-No?-Ah! Well, she went off this morning, and then I was allowed to go round and got my instructions. Terrific apologies and all that.”
“How did it happen?”
“Driving a racing car to the danger of the public,” said Mr. Danvers, with a grimace. “Trying to make it before the gates were shut. No police on the spot, as it happened, so we don’t know exactly what did happen. Nobody killed, fortunately. Saint-George took a telegraph-pole in his stride, apparently, went out head first and pitched on his shoulder. Lucky he had the windscreen down, or he’d have had no face to speak of. The car’s a total wreck, and I don’t know why he isn’t. But all those Wimseys have as many lives as cats. Come along in. These are my rooms. I hope you can eat the usual lamb cutlets-there wasn’t time to think up anything special. But I had particular orders to hunt out Saint-George’s Niersteiner ’23 and mention Uncle Peter in connection with it. Is that right? I don’t know whether Uncle Peter bought it or recommended it or merely enjoyed it, or what he had to do with it, but that’s what I was told to say.”