Read Online Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers - Free Book Online Page A

muttered Harriet to herself. One would have thought that Oxford at least would offer a respite from Peter Wimsey and the marriage question. But although she herself was a notoriety, if not precisely a celebrity, it was an annoying fact that Peter was a still more spectacular celebrity, and that, of the two, people would rather know about him than about her. As regards marriage—well, here one certainly had a chance to find out whether it worked or not. Was it worse to be a Mary Attwood ( née Stokes) or a Miss Schuster-Slatt? Was it better to be a Phoebe Bancroft ( née Tucker) or a Miss Lydgate? And would all these people have turned out exactly the same, married or single?
    She wandered into the J.C.R., which was empty, but for one drab and ill-dressed woman who sat desolately reading an illustrated paper. As Harriet passed, this woman looked up and said, rather tentatively, “Hullo! it’s Miss Vane, isn’t it?”
    Harriet racked her memory hastily. This was obviously someone very much senior to herself—she looked nearer fifty than forty. Who on earth?
    “I don’t suppose you remember me,” said the other. “Catherine Freemantle.”
    (Catherine Freemantle, good God! But she had been only two years senior to Harriet. Very brilliant, very smart, very lively and the outstanding scholar of her year. What in Heaven’s name had happened to her?)
    “Of course I remember you,” said Harriet, but I’m always so stupid about names. What have you been doing?”
    Catherine Freemantle, it seemed, had married a farmer, and everything had gone wrong. Slumps and sickness and tithe and taxes and the Milk Board and the Marketing Board, and working one’s fingers to the bone for a bare living and trying to bring up children—Harriet had read and heard enough about agricultural depression to know that the story was a common one enough. She was ashamed of being and looking so prosperous. She felt she would rather be tried for life over again than walk the daily treadmill of Catherine’s life. It was a saga, in its way, but it was preposterous. She broke in rather abruptly upon a complaint against the hardheartedness of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.
    “But, Miss Freemantle—I mean, Mrs.—Mrs. Bendick—it’s absurd that you should have to do this kind of thing. I mean, pick your own fruit and get up at all hours to feed poultry and slave like a navvy. Surely to goodness it would have paid far better for you to take on some kind of writing or intellectual job and get someone else to do the manual work.”
    “Yes, it would. But at the beginning I didn’t see it like that. I came down with a lot of ideas about the dignity of labour. And besides, at that time, my husband wouldn’t have liked it much if I’d separated myself from his interests. Of course, we didn’t think it would turn out like this.”
    What damned waste! was all Harriet could say to herself. All that brilliance, all that trained intelligence, harnessed to a load that any uneducated country girl could have drawn, and drawn far better. The thing had its compensations, she supposed. She asked the question bluntly.
    Worth it? said Mrs. Bendick. Oh, yes, it was certainly worth it. The job was worth doing. One was serving the land. And that, she managed to convey, was a service harsh and austere indeed, but a finer thing than spinning words on paper.
    “I’m quite prepared to admit that,” said Harriet. “A ploughshare is a nobler object than a razor. But if your natural talent is for barbering, wouldn’t it be better to be a barber, and a good barber—and use the profits (if you like) to speed the plough? However grand the job may be, is it your job?”
    “It’s got to be my job now,” said Mrs. Bendick. “One can’t go back to things. One gets out of touch and one’s brain gets rusty. If you’d spent your time washing and cooking for a family and digging potatoes and feeding cattle, you’d know that that kind of thing takes the edge off the