Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12)

by Dorothy L. Sayers

The glass showed her her own face, rather pale, with black brows fronting squarely either side of a strong nose, a little too broad for beauty. Her own eyes looked back at her – rather tired, rather defiant – eyes that had looked upon fear and were still wary. The mouth was the mouth of one who has been generous and repented of generosity; its wide corners were tucked back to give nothing away. With the thick, waving hair folded beneath the black cloth, the face seemed somehow stripped for action. She frowned at herself and moved her hands a little up and down upon the stuff of her gown; then, becoming impatient with the looking-glass, she turned to

I could have liked him so much if I could have met him on an equal footing.

Miss Vane – I admired you for speaking as you did to-night. 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.’

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

‘How all occasions do inform against me!’ 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 Phœbe

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,’

agree with you,’ said Miss de Vine, ‘about the difficulty of combining intellectual and emotional interests. I don’t think it affects women only; it affects men as well. But when men put their public lives before their private lives, it causes less outcry than when a woman does the same thing, because women put up with neglect better than men, having been brought up to expect it.’ ‘But suppose one doesn’t quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose,’ said Harriet, falling back on words which were not her own, ‘suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?’

But I know that, if you have put anything in hand, disagreeableness and danger will not turn you back, and God forbid they should. Whatever it is, you have my best wishes for it. I am not my own master at the moment, and do not know where I shall be sent next or when I shall be back – soon, I trust.

‘Disagreeableness and danger will not turn you back, and God forbid they should.’ That was an admission of equality, and she had not expected it of him. If he conceived of marriage along those lines, then the whole problem would have to be reviewed in that new light; but that seemed scarcely possible. To take such

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 spinning world Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.

This is perfectt

‘When I am

from him, I am dead till I be with him. United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other; which being impossible, these desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction.’ That was a most uncomfortable passage, whichever way you looked at it. She turned

belong to the same world, and all these others are the aliens.’ And then: ‘Damn it all! this is our private fight – why should they have to join in?’ But that was absurd. ‘What do you want me to do, Peter?’ ‘Chuck the ball back to me if it runs out of the circle. Not obviously. Just exercise your devastating talent for keeping to the point and speaking the truth.’ ‘That sounds easy.’ ‘It is – for you. That’s what I love you for. Didn’t you know? Well, we can’t stop to argue about it now; they’ll think we’re conspiring about something.’

wondered, in a detached kind of way, what it was that Peter valued in her and had apparently valued from that first day when she had stood in the dock and spoken for her own life. Now that she knew, she thought that a more unattractive pair of qualities could seldom have been put forward as an excuse for

devotion.

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 in dizzying circles hurled To that still centre where the spinning world Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest. Lay on thy whips, O Love, that me upright, Poised on the perilous point, in no lax bed May sleep, as tension at the verberant core Of music sleeps; for, if thou spare to smite, Staggering, we stoop, stooping, fall dumb and dead, And, dying so, sleep our sweet sleep no more.

Vane – I’ve no wish to pry impertinently into your affairs. Stop me if I’m saying too much. But we have talked a good deal about facing the facts. Isn’t it time you faced the facts about the man?’ ‘I have been facing one fact for some time,’ said Harriet, staring out with unseeing eyes into the quad, ‘and that is, that if I once gave way to Peter, I should go up like straw.’ ‘That,’ said Miss de Vine drily, ‘is moderately obvious. How often has he used that weapon against you?’ ‘Never,’ said Harriet, remembering the moments when he might have used it. ‘Never.’ ‘Then what are you afraid of? Yourself?’ ‘Isn’t this afternoon warning enough?’ ‘Perhaps. You have had the luck to come up against a very unselfish and a very honest man. He has done what you asked him without caring what it costs him and without shirking the issue. He hasn’t tried to disguise the facts or bias your judgment. You admit that, at any rate.’ ‘I suppose he realised how I should feel about it?’ ‘Realised it?’ said Miss de Vine, with a touch of irritation. ‘My dear girl, give him the credit for the brains he’s got. They are very good ones. He is painfully sensitive and far more intelligent than is good for him. But I really don’t think you can go on like this. You won’t break his patience or his control or his spirit; but you may break his health. He looks like a person pushed to the last verge of endurance.’ ‘He’s been rushing about and working very hard,’ said Harriet, defensively. ‘I shouldn’t be at all...