"By precedent, I suppose she is now with the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths," said Madame Lefevre.
"I don't know," said Henrietta, seriously. "I think her people kept her at home. They were quite well-to-do."
"Well, Miss Pym, the incidence appears to be point-something per cent." Madame Lefevre waved a thin brown hand. "We are an unsensational crowd."
"Too normal by half," Miss Wragg volunteered. "A little spot of scandal would be nice now and again. A nice change from hand-stands and upward circlings."
"I should like to see some hand-stands and upward-circlings," Lucy said. "Would it be all right if I came and watched the Seniors tomorrow morning?"
But of course she must see the Seniors, Henrietta said. They were busy with their Demonstration programme, so it would be a private Demonstration all for herself. "They are one of the best sets we ever had," she said.
"Can I have first go of the gym. when the Seniors are doing their Final Phys. on Tuesday?" Miss Wragg asked; and they began to discuss time-tables.
Miss Pym moved over to the window-seat and joined Dr Knight.
"Are you responsible for the cross-section of something called the villi?" she asked.
"Oh, no; physiology is an ordinary college subject: Catherine Lux takes that."
"Then what do you lecture on?"
"Oh, different things at different stages. Public Health. The so-called 'social' diseases. The even more so-called Facts of Life. Your subject."
"Psychology?"
"Yes. Public Health is my job, but psychology is my specialty. I liked your book so much. So common sensical. I admired that. It is so easy to be high-falutin about an abstract subject."
Lucy flushed a little. There is no praise so gratifying as that of a colleague.
"And of course I am the College medical advisor," Dr Knight went on, looking amused. "A sinecure if ever there was one. They are a disgustingly healthy crowd."
'But-" Lucy began. It is the outsider, Desterro (she was thinking), who insists on their abnormality. If it is true, then surely this trained observer, also from the outside, must be aware of it.
"They have accidents, of course," the doctor said, misunderstanding Lucy's 'but. "Their life is a long series of minor accidents-bruises, and sprains, and dislocated fingers, and what not-but it is very rarely that anything serious happens. Bentley has been the only instance in my time-the girl whose room you have. She broke a leg, and won't be back till next term."
"But-it is a strenuous training, a gruelling life; do they never break down under it?"
"Yes. That's not unknown. The last term is particularly trying. A concentration of horrors from the student's point of view. Crit. classes, and-"
"Crit. classes?"
"Yes. They each have to take a gym. and a dancing class in the presence of the united Staff and their own set, and are judged according to the show they make. Nerve-shattering. These are all over, the crit. classes; but there are still the Finals, and the Demonstration, and being given jobs, and the actual parting from student life, and what not. Yes, it is a strain for them, poor dears. But they are amazingly resilient. No one who wasn't would have survived so long. Let me get you some more coffee. I'm going to have some."
She took Lucy's cup and went away to the table; and Lucy leaned back in the folds of the curtain and looked at the garden. The sun had set, and the outlines were growing blurred; there was the first hint of dew in the soft air that blew up against her face. Somewhere on the other side of the house (in the students' common-room?) a piano was being played and a girl was singing. It was a charming voice: effortless and pure, without professional tricks and without fashionable dealing in quarter-tones. The song, moreover, was a ballad; old-fashioned and sentimental, but devoid of self-pity and posing. A frank young voice and a frank old song. It shocked Lucy to realise how long it was since she had heard any voice raised in song that was not a product of valves and batteries. In London at this moment the exhausted air was loud with radios; but here, in this cool, scented garden, a girl was singing for the love of it.
I have been too long in London, she thought; I must have a change. Find a hotel on the South Coast, perhaps. Or go abroad. One forgets that the world is young.
"Who is singing?" she asked, as her cup was handed to her again.
"Stewart, I think," Dr Knight said, not interested. "Miss Pym, you can save my life if you like to."
Lucy said that to save a doctor's life would give her immense satisfaction.
"I want to go to a medical conference in London," Dr Knight said in a conspiratorial undertone. "It is on Thursday, but that is the day of my psychology lecture. Miss Hodge thinks I am for ever going to conferences, so I can't possibly beg off again. But if you were to take that lecture for me, everything would be grand."
"But I am going back to London myself tomorrow after lunch."
"No!" said Dr Knight, much dashed. "Do you have to?"
"Oddly enough, I was just thinking how much I should hate going back."
"Then don't go. Stay on for a day or two, and save my life. Do, Miss Pym."
"And what would Henrietta think of the substitution?"
"That, of course, is sheer affectation, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself. I'm not a best-seller, I'm not a celebrity, I'm not the author of the latest text-book on the subject-"
Lucy made a small gesture acknowledging her fault, but her eyes were on the garden. Why should she go back to London yet? What was there to take her back? Nothing and nobody. For the first time that fine, independent, cushioned, celebrated life of hers looked just a little bleak. A little narrow and inhuman. Could it be? Was there, perhaps, a lack of warmth in that existence she had been so content with? Not a lack of human contact, certainly. She had her fill of human contact. But it was a very all-of-a-piece contact, now that she thought of it. Except for Mrs Montmorency from one of the suburbs of Manchester, who was her daily help, and her Aunt Celia down in Walberswick, who sometimes had her for weekends, and the tradespeople, she never talked to anyone who wasn't somehow connected with the publishing or the academic worlds. And though all the ladies and gentlemen belonging to these two worlds were, of course, both intelligent and amusing, there was no denying that their interests were limited. You couldn't, for instance, talk to one and the same person about Social Security, hill-billy songs, and what won the 3.30. They each had their "subject." And their subject, she found to her cost, was only too likely to be royalties. Lucy herself had only the vaguest idea about royalties; especially her own, and could never keep her end up in this sort of conversation.
Besides, none of them was young.
At least, not young as these children here were young. Young in years a few of her acquaintances might be, but they were already bowed down with the weight of the world's wrongs and their own importance. It was nice to meet a morning-of-the-world youngness for a change.
And it was nice to be liked.
There was no good in trying to diddle herself about why she wanted to stay a little longer; why she was seriously prepared to forgo the delights of civilisation that had seemed so desirable-so imperatively desirable-only yesterday morning. It was nice to be liked.
In the last few years she had been ignored, envied, admired, kow-towed to, and cultivated; but warm, personal liking was something she had not had since the Lower Fourth said goodbye to her, with a home-made pen-wiper and a speech by Gladys Someone-or-other, shortly after her legacy. To stay in this atmosphere of youth, of liking, of warmth, she was willing to overlook for a space the bells, the beans, and the bathrooms.