“Only then,” said Miss Chilperic, “you won’t be able to look at them. I know, if they were mine, I shouldn’t be able to take my eyes off them for a moment.”
“You can have a glass case if you like,” said Miss Edwards. “Out of the Science Lecture-Room.”
“The very thing,” said Miss Lydgate. “But how about the terms of the bequest? I mean, the glass cases-”
“ Oh, blow the bequest!” cried the Dean. “Surely one can borrow a thing for a week or two. We can lump some of those hideous geological specimens together and have one of the small cases taken up to your room.”
“By all means,” said Miss Edwards. “I’ll see to it.”
“Thank you,” said Harriet; “that will be lovely.”
“Aren’t you simply aching to play with the new toy?” asked Miss Allison. “Does Lord Peter play chess?”
“I don’t know,” said Harriet. “I’m not much of a player. I just fell in love with the pieces.”
“Well”, said Miss de Vine, kindly,“let us have a game. They are so beautiful, it would be a pity not to use them.”
“But I expect you could play my head off.”
“Oh, do play with them!” cried Miss Shaw, sentimentally. “Think how they must be longing for a little life and movement after sitting all that time in a shop-window.”
“I will give you a pawn,” suggested Miss de Vine.
Even with this advantage, Harriet suffered three humiliating defeats in quick succession: first, because she was but a poor player; secondly, because she found it difficult to remember which piece was which; thirdly, because the anguish of parting at one fell swoop with a fully-armed warrior, a prancing steed and a complete nest of ivory balls was such that she could scarcely bear to place so much as a pawn in jeopardy. Miss de Vine, viewing with perfect equanimity the disappearance even of a robed counsellor with long moustaches or an elephant carrying a castleful of combatants, soon had Harriet’s king penned helplessly among his own defenders. Nor was the game made any easier for the weaker party by being played under the derisive eye of Miss Hillyard, who, pronouncing chess to be the world’s most wearisome amusement, yet would not go away and get on with her work, but sat staring at the board as though fascinated and (what was worse) fiddling with the captured pieces and putting Harriet into an agony for fear she would drop one.
Moreover, when the games were finished, and Miss Edwards had announced that a glass case had been dusted and taken up to Harriet’s room by a scout. Miss Hillyard insisted on helping to carry the pieces over, grasping for the purpose the white king and queen, whose headgear bore delicate waving ornaments like antennae, extremely liable to damage. Even when the Dean had discovered that the pieces could be more safely transported standing upright in their box, Miss Hillyard attached herself to the party that escorted them across the quad, and was officious in helping to set the glass case in a convenient position opposite the bed, “so that,” as she observed, “you can see them if you wake up in the night.”
The following day happened to be the Dean’s birthday. Harriet, going shortly after breakfast to purchase a tribute of roses in the Market, and coming out into the High Street with the intention of making an appointment at the hair-dresser’s, was rewarded by the rather unexpected sight of two male backs, issuing from the Mitre and proceeding, apparently in perfect amity, in an easterly direction. The shorter and slighter of the two she could have singled out from a million backs anywhere; nor was it easy to mistake the towering bulk and breadth of Mr. Reginald Pomfret. Both parties were smoking pipes, and she concluded from this that the object of their excursion could scarcely be swords or pistols on Port Meadow. They were strolling in a leisurely after-breakfast manner, and she took care not to catch them up; she hoped that what Lord Saint-George called the famous family charm was being exerted to good purpose; she was too old to enjoy the sensation of being squabbled over-it made all three of them ridiculous. Ten years ago, she might have felt flattered; but it seemed that the lust to power was a thing one grew out of. What one wanted, she thought, standing amid the stuffy perfumes of the hair-dresser’s establishment, was peace, and freedom from the pressure of angry and agitated personalities. She booked an appointment for the afternoon and resumed her way. As she passed Queen’s, Peter came down the steps alone.
“Hullo!” said he. “Why the floral emblems?”
Harriet explained.
“Good egg!” said his lordship. “I like your Dean.” He relieved her of the roses. “Let me also be there with a gift.
Make her a goodly chapilet of azur’d Colombine,
And wreathe about her coronet with sweetest Eglantine,
With roses damask, white, and red, and fairest flower delice,
With Cowslips of Jerusalem, and cloves of Paradice.
Though what Cowslips of Jerusalem may be I do not know, and they are probably not in season.”
Harriet turned back with him marketwards.
“Your young friend came to see me,” pursued Peter.
“So I observed. Did you ‘fix a vacant stare and slay him with your noble birth’?”
“And he my own kin in the sixteenth degree on the father’s mother’s side? No; he’s a nice lad, and the way to his heart is through the playing-fields of Eton. He told me all his griefs and I sympathized very kindly, mentioning that there were better ways of killing care than drowning it in a butt of malmsey. But, O God, turn back the universe and give me yesterday! He was beautifully sozzled last night, and had one breakfast before he came out and another with me at the Mitre. I do not envy the heart of youth, but only its head and stomach.”
“Have you heard anything fresh about Arthur Robinson?”
“Only that he married a young woman called Charlotte Ann Clarke, and had by her a daughter, Beatrice Maud. That was easy, because we know where he was living eight years ago, and could consult the local registers. But they’re still hunting the registers to find either his death-supposing him to be dead, which is rather less likely than otherwise-or the birth of the second child, which-if it ever occurred-might tell us where he went to after the trouble at York. Unfortunately, Robinsons are as plentiful as blackberries, and Arthur Robinsons not uncommon. And if he really did change his name, there may not be any Robinson entries at all. Another of my searchers has gone to his old lodgings-where, you may remember, he very imprudently married the landlady’s daughter; but the Clarkes have moved, and it’s going to be a bit of a job finding them. Another line is to inquire among the scholastic agencies and the small and inferior private schools, because it seems probable-You’re not attending.”
“Yes, I am,” said Harriet, vaguely. “He had a wife called Charlotte and you re looking for him in a private school.” A rich, damp fragrance gushed out upon them as they turned into the Market, and she was overcome by a sense of extravagant well-being. “I love this smell-it’s like the cactus-house at the Botanical Gardens.”
Her companion opened his mouth to speak, looked at her, and then, as one that will not interfere with fortune, let the name of Robinson die upon his lips.
“Mandragorae dederunt odorem.”
“What do you say, Peter?”
“Nothing. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo.” He laid his hand gently upon her arm. “Let us interview the merchant with the sops-in-wine.”
And when both roses and carnations had been despatched-this time by a messenger-to their destination, it seemed natural, since the Botanical Gardens had been mentioned, to go there. For a garden, as Bacon observes, is the purest of human pleasures and the greatest refreshment to the spirit of man; and even idle and ignorant people who cannot distinguish Leptosiphon hybridus from Kaulfussia amelloides and would rather languish away in a wilderness than break their backs with dibbling and weeding may get a good deal of pleasant conversation out of it, especially if they know the old-fashioned names of the commoner sorts of flowers and are both tolerably well acquainted with the minor Elizabethan lyrists.