Gaudy Night

Mornings in Bodley, drowsing among the worn browns and tarnished gilding of Duke Humphrey, snuffing the faint, musty odour of slowly perching leather, hearing only the discreet tippety-tap of Agag-feet along the padded floor; long afternoons, taking an outrigger up the Cher, feeling the rough kiss of the sculls on unaccustomed palms, listening to the rhythmical satisfying ker-klunk of the rowlocks, watching the play of muscle on the Bursar’s sturdy shoulders at stroke, as the sharp spring wind flattened the thin silk shirt against them; or, if the day were warmer, flicking swiftly in a canoe under Magdalen walls and so by the twisting race at King’s Mill by Mesopotamia to Parson’s Pleasure; then back, with mind relaxed and body stretched and vigorous, to make toast by the fire; and then, at night, the lit lamp and the drawn curtain, with the flutter of the turned page and soft scrape of pen on paper the only sounds to break the utter silence between quarter and quarter chime. Now and again, Harriet took out the dossier of the poison-pen and looked it over; yet, viewed by that solitary lamp, even the ugly, printed scrawls looked harmless and impersonal, and the whole dismal problem less important than the determining of a first edition date or the settlement of a disputed reading.

In that melodious silence, something came back to her that had lain dumb and dead ever since the old, i

To that still centre where the spi

Sleeps on its axis-

Had she made it or remembered it? It sounded familiar, but in her heart she knew certainly that it was her own, and seemed familiar only because it was inevitable and right.

She opened the note-book at another page and wrote the words down. She felt like the man in the Punch story: “Nice little barf-room, Liza-what shall we do with it?” Blank verse?… No… it was part of the octave of a so

Then, with many false starts and blank feet, returning and filling and erasing painfully as she went, she began to write again, knowing with a deep i

Here, then, at home…

the centre, the middle sea, the heart of the labyrinth…

Here, then, at home, by no more storms distrest,

Stay we our steps-course-flight-hands folded and

wings furled.

Here, then at home, by no more storms distrest,

Folding laborious hands we sit, wings furled;

Here in close perfume lies the rose-leaf curled,

Here the sun stands and knows not east nor west,

Here no tide runs; we have come, last and best,

From the wide zone through dizzying circles hurled,

To that still centre where the spi

Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.

Yes; there was something there, though the metre halted monotonously, lacking a free stress-shift, and the chime “dizzying-spi

And there it seemed to end. She had reached the full close, and had nothing more to say. She could find no turn for the sestet to take, no epigram, no change of mood. She put down a tentative line or two and crossed them out. If the right twist would not come of itself, it was useless to manufacture it. She had her image-the world sleeping like a great top on its everlasting spindle-and anything added to that would be mere verse-making. Something might come of it some day. In the meanwhile she had got her mood on to paper-and this is the release that all writers, even the feeblest, seek for as men seek for love; and, having found it, they doze off happily into dreams and trouble their hearts no further.

She shut up the note-book, scandal and so

“We’ve found a very nice place in Headington, madam, thank you. I’m stopping there myself for my holiday. These are my little girls. This one’s Beatrice and this is Carola. Say how do you do to Miss Vane.”

Harriet shook hands gravely with the children and asked their ages and how they were getting on.

“It’s nice for you having them so close.”

“Yes, madam. I don’t know what I should do without them.” The look of quick pride and joy was almost fiercely possessive. Harriet got a glimpse of a fundamental passion that she had, as it were, forgotten when she made her reckoning; it blazed across the serenity of her so

“They’re all I have, now that I’ve lost their father.”

“Oh, dear, yes,” said Harriet, a little uncomfortably. “Has he-how long ago was that, A

“Three years, madam. He was driven to it. They said he did what he ought not and it preyed on his mind. But I didn’t care. He never did any harm to-anybody, and a man’s first duty is to his wife and family, isn’t it? I’d have starved with him gladly, and worked my fingers to the bone to keep the children. But he couldn’t get over it. It’s a cruel world for anyone with his way to make and so much competition.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Harriet. The elder child, Beatrice, was looking up at her mother with eyes that were too intelligent for her eight years. It would be better to get off the subject of the husband’s wrongs and iniquities, whatever they might be. She murmured that the children must be a great comfort. “Yes, madam. There’s nothing like having children of your own. They make life worth living. Beatrice here is her father’s living image, aren’t you, darling? I was sorry not to have a boy; but now I’m glad. It’s difficult to bring up boys without a father.”

“And what are Beatrice and Carola going to be when they grow up?”

“I hope they’ll be good girls, madam, and good wives and mothers-that’s what I’ll bring them up to be.”

“I want to ride a motor-cycle when I’m bigger,” said Beatrice, shaking her curls assertively.

“Oh, no, darling. What things they say, don’t they, madam?”

“Yes, I do,” said Beatrice. “I’m going to have a motor-cycle and keep a garage.”

“Nonsense,” said her mother, a little sharply. “You mustn’t talk so. That’s a boy’s job.”

“But lots of girls do boys’ jobs nowadays,” said Harriet.

“But they ought not, madam. It isn’t fair. The boys have hard enough work to get jobs of their own. Please don’t put such things into her head, madam. You’ll never get a husband, Beatrice, if you mess about in a garage, getting all ugly and dirty.”