“Some of us old students aren’t much to write home about,” said Harriet. “Look at Gubbins for instance.”

“Oh, my dear! That crashing bore. And all held together with safety-pins. And I wish she’d wash her neck.”

“I think,” said Miss de Vine, with painstaking readiness to set the facts in a just light, “that the color is natural to her skin.”

“Then she should eat carrots and clear her system,” retorted the Dean, snatching Harriet’s gown from her. “No, don’t you bother. It won’t take me a minute to chuck them through the S.C.R. window. And don’t you dare to run away, or I shall never find you again.”

“Is my hair tidy” inquired Miss de Vine, becoming suddenly human and hesitating with the loss of her cap and gown.

“Well, said Harriet, surveying the thick, iron-grey coils from which a quantity of overworked hair-pins stood out like croquet-hoops, ”it’s coming down just a trifle.”

“It always does,‘ said Miss de Vine, making vague dabs at the pins. I think I shall have it cut it short. It must be much less trouble that way.”

“I like it as it is. That big coil suits you. Let me have a go at it, shall I?”

“I wish you would,” said the historian, thankfully submitting to having the pins thrust into place. “I am very stupid with my fingers. I do possess a hat somewhere,” she added, with an irresolute glance round the quad, as though expected to see the hat growing on a tree, “but the Dean said we’d better stay here. Oh, thank you. That feels much better-a marvellous sense of security. Ah! here’s Miss Martin. Miss Vane has kindly been acting as hair-dresser to the White Queen-but oughtn’t I to put on a hat?”

“Not now,” said Miss Martin emphatically. “I’m going to have some over tea, and so are you. I’m ravenous. I’ve been tagging after old Professor Boniface who’s ninety-seven and practically gaga, and screaming in his deaf ear till I’m almost dead. What’s the time? Well, I’m like Marjory Fleming’s turkey-I do not give a single damn for the Old Students’ Meeting; I simply must eat and drink. Let’s swoop down upon the table before Miss Shaw and Miss Stevens collar the last ices.”

2

So far, so good, thought Harriet, changing for dinner. There had been baddish moments, like trying to renew contact with Mary Stokes. There had also been a brief encounter with Miss Hillyard, the History tutor, who had never liked her, and who had said, with wry mouth and acidulated tongue, “Well, Miss Vane, you have had some very varied experiences since we saw you last.” But there had been good moments too, carrying with them the promise of permanence in a Heraclitean universe. She felt it might be possible to survive the Gaudy Dinner, though Mary Stokes had dutifully bagged for her a place next herself, which was trying. Fortunately, she had contrived to get Phoebe Tucker on her other side. (In these surroundings, she thought of them still as Stokes and Tucker.)

The first thing to strike her, when the procession had slowly filed up to the High Table, and grace had been said, was the appalling noise in Hall. “Strike” was the right word. It fell upon one like the rush and weight of a shouting waterfall; it beat on the ear like the hammer-clang of some infernal smithy; it savaged the air like the metallic clatter of fifty thousand monotype machines casting type. Two hundred female tongues, released as though by a spring, burst into high, clamorous speech. She had forgotten what it was like, but it came back to her tonight how, at the beginning of every term, she had felt that if the noise were to go on like that for one minute more, she would go quite mad. Within a week, the effect of it had always worn off. Use had made her immune. But now it shattered her unaccustomed nerves with all and more than all its original violence. People screamed in her ear, and she found herself screaming back. She looked rather anxiously at Mary; could any invalid bear it? Mary seemed not to notice; she was more animated than she had been earlier in the day and was screaming quite cheerfully at Dorothy Collins. Harriet turned to Phoebe.

“Gosh! I’d forgotten what this row was like. If I scream I shall be as hoarse as a crow. I’m going to bellow at you in a fog-horn kind of voice. Do you mind?”

“Not a bit. I can hear you quite well. Why on earth did God give women such shrill voices? Though I don’t mind frightfully. It reminds me of native workmen quarrelling. They’re doing us rather well, don’t you think? Much better soup than we ever got.”

“They’ve made a special effort for Gaudy. Besides, the new Bursar’s rather good, I believe; she was something to do with Domestic Economy. Dear old Straddles had a mind above food.”

“Yes; but I liked Straddles. She was awfully decent to me when I got ill just before Schools. Do you remember?”

“What happened to Straddles when she left?”

“Oh, she’s Treasurer at Bronte College. Finance was really her line, you know. She had a real genius for figures.”

“And what became of that woman-what’s her name?- Peabody? Freebody?-you know-the one who always said solemnly that her great ambition in life was to become Bursar of Shrewsbury?”

“Oh, my dear! She went absolutely potty on some new kind of religion and joined an extraordinary sect somewhere or other where they go about in loin-cloths and have agapemones of nuts and grape-fruit. That is, if you mean Brodribb?”

“Brodribb-I knew it was something like Peabody. Fancy her of all people! So intensely practical and sub-fuse.”

“Reaction, I expect. Repressed emotional instincts and all that. She was frightfully sentimental inside, you know.”

“I know. She wormed round rather. Had a sort of G.P. for Miss Shaw. Perhaps we were all rather inhibited in those days.”

“Well, the present generation doesn’t suffer from that, I’m told. No inhibitions of any kind.”

“Oh, come, Phoebe. We had a good bit of liberty. Not like before Women’s Degrees. We weren’t monastic.”

“No, but we were born long enough before the War to feel a few restrictions. We inherited some sense of responsibility. And Brodribb came from a fearfully rigid sort of household-Positivists or Unitarians or Presbyterians or something. The present lot are the real War-time generation, you know.”

“So they are. Well, I don’t know that I’ve any right to throw stones at Brodribb.”

“Oh, my dear! That’s entirely different. One thing’s natural; the other’s-I don’t know, but it seems to me like complete degeneration of the grey matter. She even wrote a book.”

“About agapemones?”

“Yes. And the Higher Wisdom. And Beautiful Thought. That sort of thing. Full of bad syntax.”

“Oh, lord. Yes-that’s pretty awful, isn’t it? I can’t think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one’s grammar.”

“It’s a kind of intellectual rot that sets in, I’m afraid. But which of them causes the other, or whether they’re both symptoms of something else, I don’t know. What with Trimmer’s mental healing, and Henderson going nudist-”No!”

“Fact. There she is, at the next table. That’s why she’s so brown.”

“And her frock so badly cut. If you can’t be naked, be as ill-dressed as possible, I suppose.”

“I sometimes wonder whether a little normal, hearty wickedness wouldn’t be good for a great many of us.”