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

razor. You needn’t think I don’t envy you people your easy life; I do. I came to the Gaudy out of sentiment, and I wish I’d stopped away. I’m two years older than you, but I look twenty. None of you care in the least for my interests, and yours all seem to me to be mere beating the air. You don’t seem to have anything to do with real life. You are going about in a dream.” She stopped speaking, and her angry voice softened. “But it’s a beautiful dream in its way., It seems queer to me now to think that once I was a scholar... I don’t know. You may be right after all. Learning and literature have a way of outlasting the civilisation that made them.”
    “The word and nought else
in time endures.
Not you long after,
perished and mute
will last, but the defter
viol and lute,”
    quoted Harriet. She stared vaguely out into the sunshine. “It’s curious—because I have been thinking exactly the same thing—only in a different connection. Look here! I admire you like hell, but I believe you’re all wrong. I’m sure one should do one’s own job, however trivial, and not persuade one’s self into doing somebody else’s, however noble.”
    As she spoke, she remembered Miss de Vine; here was a new aspect of persuasion.
    “That’s all very well,” replied Mrs. Bendick. “But one’s rather apt to marry into somebody else’s job.”
    True; but Harriet was offered the opportunity of marrying into a job as near her own as made no great difference. And into money enough to make any job supererogatory. Again she saw herself unfairly provided with advantages which more deserving people desired in vain.
    “I suppose,” she said, “marriage is the really important job, isn’t it?”
    “Yes, it is,” said Mrs. Bendick. “My marriage is happy as marriages go. But I often wonder whether my husband wouldn’t have been better off with another kind of wife. He never says so, but I wonder. I think he knows I miss—things, and resents it sometimes. I don’t know why I should say this to you—I’ve never said it to anybody and I never knew you very well, did I?”
    “No; and I haven’t been very sympathetic, either. In fact, I’ve been disgustingly rude.”
    “You have, rather,” said Mrs. Bendick. “But you have such a beautiful voice to be rude in.”
    “Good gracious!” said Harriet.
    “Our farm’s on the Welsh border, and the people all speak in the most hideous local sing-song. Do you know what makes me feel most homesick here? The cultured speech. The dear old much-abused Oxford accent. That’s funny, isn’t it?”
    “I thought the noise in Hall was more like a cage full of peacocks.”
    “Yes; but out of Hall you can pick out the people who speak the right way. Lots of them don’t, of course; but some do. You do; and you have a lovely voice into the bargain. Do you remember the old Bach Choir days?”
    “Do I not? Do you manage to get any music on the Welsh border? The Welsh can sing.”
    “I haven’t much time for music. I try to teach the children.”
    Harriet took advantage of this opening to make suitable domestic inquiries. She parted eventually from Mrs. Bendick with a depressed feeling that she had seen a Derby winner making shift with a coal-cart.
     
    Sunday lunch in Hall was a casual affair. Many people did not attend it, having engagements in the town. Those who did, dropped in as and when they liked, fetched their food from the serving-hatches and consumed it in chattering groups wherever they could find seats. Harriet, having seized a plate of cold ham for herself, looked round for a lunch partner, and was thankful to see Phoebe Tucker just come in and being helped by the attendant scout to a portion of cold roast beef. The two joined forces, and sat down at the far end of a long table which ran parallel to the High and at right angles to the other tables. From there they commanded the whole room, including the High Table itself and the row of serving-hatches. As her eye