Your obedient servant,
PETER DEATH BREDON WIMSEY
“Is that pompous enough?”
“Beautiful,” said Harriet. “Scarcely a word under three syllables and all the names you’ve got. What your nephew calls ‘Uncle Peter at his stuffiest.’ All it wants is the crest and sealing-wax. Why not write the child a nice, friendly note?”
“He doesn’t want friendliness,” said his lordship, grinning. “He wants satisfaction.” He rang the bell and sent the waiter for Bunter and the sealing-wax. “You’re right about the beneficial effects of a red seal-he’ll think it’s a challenge. Bunter, bring me my seal ring. Come to think of it, that’s an idea. Shall I offer him the choice of swords or pistols on Port Meadow at daybreak?”
“I think it’s time you grew up,” said Harriet.
“Is it?” said Peter, addressing the envelope. “I’ve never challenged anybody. It would be fun. I’ve been challenged three times and fought twice; the third time the police butted in. I’m afraid that was because my opponent didn’t fancy my choice of weapon… Thanks, Bunter… A bullet, you see, may go anywhere, but steel’s almost bound to go somewhere.”
“Peter,” said Harriet, looking gravely at him, “I believe you’re showing off.”
“I believe I am,” said he, setting the heavy ring accurately down upon the wax. “Every cock will crow upon his own dung-hill.” His grin was half petulant, half deprecating. “I hate being loomed over by gigantic undergraduates and made to feel my age.”
20
For, to speak in a word, envy is naught else but tristitia de bonis alienis, sorrow for other men’s good, be it present, past, or to come: and gaudium de adversis, and joy at their harms… Tis a common disease, and almost natural to us, as Tacitus holds, to envy another man’s prosperity.
– ROBERT BURTON
It is said that love and a cough cannot be hid. Nor is it easy to hide two-and-thirty outsize ivory chessmen; unless one is so inhuman as to leave them swaddled in their mummy clothes of wadding and entombed within the six sides of a wooden sarcophagus. What is the use of acquiring one’s heart’s desire if one cannot handle and gloat over it, show it to one’s friends and gather an anthology of envy and admiration? Whatever awkward deductions might be drawn about the giver-and, after all, was that anybody’s business?-Harriet knew that she must needs display the gift or burst in solitary ecstasy.
Accordingly, she put a bold face on it, marched her forces openly into the Senior Common Room after Hall, and deployed them upon the table, with the eager assistance of the dons.
“But where are you going to keep them?” asked the Dean, when everybody had sufficiently exclaimed over the fineness of the carving, and had taken her turn at twisting and examining the nests of concentric globes. “You can’t just leave them in the box. Look at those fragile little spears and things and the royal head-dresses. They ought to be put in a glass case.”
“I know,” said Harriet. “It’s just like me to want something completely impracticable. I shall have to wrap them all up again.”
“Only then,” said Miss Chilperic, “you won’t be able to look at them. I know, if they were mine, I shouldn’t be able to take my eyes off them for a moment.”
“You can have a glass case if you like,” said Miss Edwards. “Out of the Science Lecture-Room.”
“The very thing,” said Miss Lydgate. “But how about the terms of the bequest? I mean, the glass cases-”
“ Oh, blow the bequest!” cried the Dean. “Surely one can borrow a thing for a week or two. We can lump some of those hideous geological specimens together and have one of the small cases taken up to your room.”
“By all means,” said Miss Edwards. “I’ll see to it.”
“Thank you,” said Harriet; “that will be lovely.”
“Aren’t you simply aching to play with the new toy?” asked Miss Allison. “Does Lord Peter play chess?”
“I don’t know,” said Harriet. “I’m not much of a player. I just fell in love with the pieces.”
“Well”, said Miss de Vine, kindly,“let us have a game. They are so beautiful, it would be a pity not to use them.”
“But I expect you could play my head off.”
“Oh, do play with them!” cried Miss Shaw, sentimentally. “Think how they must be longing for a little life and movement after sitting all that time in a shop-window.”
“I will give you a pawn,” suggested Miss de Vine.
Even with this advantage, Harriet suffered three humiliating defeats in quick succession: first, because she was but a poor player; secondly, because she found it difficult to remember which piece was which; thirdly, because the anguish of parting at one fell swoop with a fully-armed warrior, a prancing steed and a complete nest of ivory balls was such that she could scarcely bear to place so much as a pawn in jeopardy. Miss de Vine, viewing with perfect equanimity the disappearance even of a robed counsellor with long moustaches or an elephant carrying a castleful of combatants, soon had Harriet’s king penned helplessly among his own defenders. Nor was the game made any easier for the weaker party by being played under the derisive eye of Miss Hillyard, who, pronouncing chess to be the world’s most wearisome amusement, yet would not go away and get on with her work, but sat staring at the board as though fascinated and (what was worse) fiddling with the captured pieces and putting Harriet into an agony for fear she would drop one.
Moreover, when the games were finished, and Miss Edwards had announced that a glass case had been dusted and taken up to Harriet’s room by a scout. Miss Hillyard insisted on helping to carry the pieces over, grasping for the purpose the white king and queen, whose headgear bore delicate waving ornaments like antennae, extremely liable to damage. Even when the Dean had discovered that the pieces could be more safely transported standing upright in their box, Miss Hillyard attached herself to the party that escorted them across the quad, and was officious in helping to set the glass case in a convenient position opposite the bed, “so that,” as she observed, “you can see them if you wake up in the night.”
The following day happened to be the Dean’s birthday. Harriet, going shortly after breakfast to purchase a tribute of roses in the Market, and coming out into the High Street with the intention of making an appointment at the hair-dresser’s, was rewarded by the rather unexpected sight of two male backs, issuing from the Mitre and proceeding, apparently in perfect amity, in an easterly direction. The shorter and slighter of the two she could have singled out from a million backs anywhere; nor was it easy to mistake the towering bulk and breadth of Mr. Reginald Pomfret. Both parties were smoking pipes, and she concluded from this that the object of their excursion could scarcely be swords or pistols on Port Meadow. They were strolling in a leisurely after-breakfast manner, and she took care not to catch them up; she hoped that what Lord Saint-George called the famous family charm was being exerted to good purpose; she was too old to enjoy the sensation of being squabbled over-it made all three of them ridiculous. Ten years ago, she might have felt flattered; but it seemed that the lust to power was a thing one grew out of. What one wanted, she thought, standing amid the stuffy perfumes of the hair-dresser’s establishment, was peace, and freedom from the pressure of angry and agitated personalities. She booked an appointment for the afternoon and resumed her way. As she passed Queen’s, Peter came down the steps alone.