"Tell me," said the Dean, "Lord Peter - what is he like?"
"To look at, do you mean? Or to work with?"
"Well, one knows more or less what he looks like. Fair and Mayfair. I meant, to talk to."
"Rather amusing. He does a good deal of the talking himself, if it comes to that."
"I met him once at a dog show," put in Miss Armstrong unexpectedly. "He was giving a perfect imitation of the silly-ass-about-town."
"Then he was either frightfully bored or detecting something," said Harriet, laughing. "I know that frivolous mood, and it's mostly camouflage - but one doesn't always know for what."
"There must be something behind it," said Miss Barton, "because he's obviously very intelligent. But is it only intelligence, or is there any genuine feeling?"
"I shouldn't," said Harriet, gazing thoughtfully into her empty coffee cup, "accuse him of any lack of feeling. I've seen him very much upset, for instance, over convicting a sympathetic criminal. But he is really rather reserved, in spite of that deceptive manner."
"Perhaps he's shy," suggested Phoebe Tucker, kindly. "People who talk a lot often are. I think they are very much to be pitied."
"Shy?" said Harriet. "Well, hardly. Nervy, perhaps - that blessed word covers a lot. But he doesn't exactly seem to call for pity."
"Why should he?" said Miss Barton. "In a very pitiful world, I don't see much need to pity a young man who has everything he could possibly want."
"He must be a remarkable person if he has that," said Miss de Vine, with a gravity that her eyes belied.
"And he's not so young as all that," said Harriet. "He's forty-five." (This was Miss Barton's age.)
"I think it's rather an impertinence to pity people," said the Dean.
"Hear, hear!" said Harriet. "Nobody likes being pitied. Most of us enjoy self-pity, but that's another thing."
"Caustic," said Miss de Vine, "but painfully true."
"But what I should like to know," pursued Miss Barton, refusing to be diverted, "Is whether this dilettante gentleman does anything, outside his hobbies of detecting crimes and collecting books, and, I believe, playing cricket in his off-time."
Harriet, who had been congratulating herself upon the way in which she was keeping her temper, was seized with irritation.
"I don't know," she said. "Does it matter? Why should he do anything else? Catching murderers isn't a soft job, or a sheltered job. It takes a lot of time and energy, and you may very easily get injured or killed. I dare say he does it for fun, but at any rate, he does do it. Scores of people must have as much reason to thank him as I have. You can't call that nothing."
"I completely agree," said the Dean. "I think one ought to be very grateful to people who do dirty jobs for nothing, whatever their reason is."
Miss Fortescue applauded this. "The drains in my weekend cottage got stopped up last Sunday, and a most helpful neighbor came and unstopped them. He got quite filthy in the process and I apologized profusely, but he said I owed him no thanks, because he was inquisitive and liked drains. He may not have been telling the truth, but even if he was, I certainly had nothing to grumble about."
"Talking of drains," said the Bursar -
The conversation took a less personal and more anecdotal turn (for there is no chance assembly of people who cannot make lively conversation about drains), and after a little time Miss Barton retired to bed. The Dean breathed a sigh of relief.
"I hope you didn't mind too much," she said. "Miss Barton is the most terribly downright person, and she was determined to get all that off her chest. She is a splendid person, but hasn't very much sense of humor. She can't bear anything to be done except from the very loftiest motives."
Harriet apologized for having spoken so vehemently.
"I thought you took it all wonderfully well. And your Lord Peter sounds a most interesting person. But I don't see why you should be forced to discuss him, poor man."
"If you ask me," observed the Bursar, "we discuss everything a great deal too much in this university. We argue about this and that and why and wherefore, instead of getting the thing done."
"But oughtn't we to ask what things we want done," objected the Dean.
Harriet grinned at Betty Armstrong, hearing the familiar academic wrangle begin. Before ten minutes had passed, somebody had introduced the word "values." An hour later they were still at it. Finally the Bursar was heard to quote:
"God made the integers; all else is the work of man."
"Oh, bother!" cried the Dean. "Do let's keep mathematics out of it. And physics. I cannot cope with them."
"Who mentioned Planck's constant a little time ago?"
"I did, and I'm sorry for it. I call it a revolting little object."
The Dean's emphatic tones reduced everybody to laughter, and, midnight striking, the party broke up.
"I am still living out of College," said Miss de Vine to Harriet. "May I walk across to your room with you?"
Harriet assented, wondering what Miss de Vine had to say to her. They stepped out together into the New Quad. The moon was up, painting the buildings with cold washes of black and silver whose austerity rebuked the yellow gleam of lighted windows behind which old friends reunited still made merry with talk and laughter.
"It might almost be term-time," said Harriet.
"Yes." Miss de Vine smiled oddly. "If you were to listen at those windows, you would find it was the middle-aged ones who were making the noise. The old have gone to bed, wondering whether they have worn as badly as their contemporaries. They have suffered some shocks, and their feet hurt them. And the younger ones are chatting soberly about life and its responsibilities. But the women of forty are pretending they are undergraduates again, and finding it rather an effort. Miss Vane - I admired you for speaking as you did tonight. Detachment is a rare virtue, and very few people find it lovable, either in themselves or in others. If you ever find a person who likes you in spite of it - still more, because of it - that liking has very great value, because it is perfectly sincere, and because, with that person, you will never need to be anything but sincere yourself."
"That is probably very true," said Harriet, "but what makes you say it?"
"Not any desire to offend you, believe me. But I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them."
"Yes," said Harriet, "but I am one of them. I disconcert myself very much. I never know what I do feel."
"I don't think that matters, provided one doesn't try to persuade one's self into appropriate feelings."
They had entered the Old Quad, and the ancient beeches, most venerable of all Shrewsbury institutions, cast over them a dappled and changing shadow-pattern that was more confusing than darkness.
"But one has to make some sort of choice," said Harriet. "And between one desire and another, how is one to know which things are really of overmastering importance?"
"We can only know that," said Miss de Vine, "when they have overmastered us."