The House of Hardie (4 page)

There was a knock at the door. A young man appeared without waiting for any call, hesitated briefly when he saw the family group, but stayed long enough to introduce himself as another freshman on the same staircase and to offer Archie tea later in the day. A second caller, before the first had left, looked hopefully at Archie's wide shoulders and tall, strong body and enquired whether he was interested in college rugger. Yet another unknown visitor, less tentative than the first two, announced that he had Yates, A. down on his list as a wetbob. College tubs, he said, would start at two o'clock on Friday; university rowing trials were on Saturday.

Lucy sighed with envy. All these young men, and the hundreds more who were still settling into their rooms, were waiting to become Archie's friends, if he wanted them. A whole new life, full of new activities, lay before him, while she would have to return to Castlemere with no one to talk to but Miss Jarrold. How lucky Archie was!

It was not in her brother's nature to show excitement. He liked to appear calm and in control of a situation, as though everything that happened was exactly what he had
expected. Lucy herself would have been jumping up and down by now with pleasure at the prospect of so many new experiences. Miss Jarrold was continually telling her that she could not be considered a well-brought-up young lady until she had learned to control her emotions and the expression on her face. But Lucy had no intention of spending the rest of her life looking bored. The whole point of growing up would be to get away from Castlemere, which was beautiful and spacious and comfortingly well-ordered but – well, unexciting.

If all went well, her own escape would come in two years' time, when her grandfather had promised to open up his Mayfair house for the whole of the London Season. Her aunt would present her at Court, and for two months she would dance and dine and ride in the park and leave and receive calling cards and change her clothes six times a day.

There was a sense in which all that would be exciting. But although Lucy was not sophisticated enough to be cynical, she knew perfectly well that the whole point of her Season would be to show her off as a marriageable girl. The mothers of various eligible bachelors would weigh her in the social balance, noting her lack of a title and trying to calculate how generous the Marquess of Ross was likely to be to his favourite grandchild when it came to settling a dowry. The marquess, meanwhile, would be making his own stipulations to ensure that Lucy's future station in life would be worthy of her. Only when all these negotiations had been satisfactorily concluded would some young man be allowed to fall in love with her, and Lucy would be told that she might love him back. She would be chaperoned for every moment of the day, and throughout the whole of this period – even if she were enjoying herself – she would be expected to appear
cool and calm and hardly interested in what was happening. That could not be thought of as any kind of exploration.

If only she too could come to Oxford and make free-and-easy new friends and learn about subjects which she could not even imagine in her mind, because she had never heard of them. Lucy sighed longingly to herself. But she knew that she was not well enough educated.

Archie himself was not particularly clever. He had come to Oxford because it was the thing to do, and Lucy guessed that he would not spend too much of his time working. But at least he had been well taught at school: he could write verses in Latin and Greek. At the end of his time here he would get a degree of some kind. Lucy, in contrast, had never taken any kind of examination and certainly would not pass one if she tried. She could speak German and French fluently, play the piano adequately and paint watercolours extremely well. But when it came to facts, Miss Jarrold was too often vague, and Lucy lacked any interest in remembering. It was only for a fleeting second that she wondered whether, if she had been someone quite different – someone brilliantly intelligent but still a girl – she would have been allowed to come to Oxford like Archie.

‘Are there,' she asked, ‘any young women studying here?'

It was an innocent enough question, so the loudness of her brother's reaction startled her. The marquess merely smiled indulgently at her foolishness, but Archie could not control his mirth, laughing as though he would never be able to stop.

‘Really, Lucy!' he exclaimed, when at last he could speak. ‘What an extraordinary idea! Women at Oxford, indeed!'

Archie Yates had been right to guess that the young woman he glimpsed in The House of Hardie was related to its owner. John Hardie, brushing aside his wife's objection that no one would ever spell or pronounce the name correctly, had christened his only daughter Margaux out of enthusiasm for the magnificent vintage produced at Château Margaux in the year of her birth. But five-year-old Gordon, gazing down for the first time at his baby sister, had exclaimed at her tininess and rechristened her Midge. She had been known by Gordon's choice of name ever since.

At the age of twenty, Midge Hardie supposed that she was as tall as she was ever likely to be: five foot one in her shoes. She would never appear stately. The low-necked velveteen dresses which were the fashion in Oxford in the autumn of 1885, with their sweeping skirts, looked ridiculous on her. But her waist was tiny. Wearing a skirt of a plain, unfussy material and a nipped-in jacket she looked not merely businesslike but smart.

The smartness did not usually extend to her long black hair. However tightly she might strain it off her face and imprison it in the two long plaits which crossed over the top of her head to provide an extra inch of height, one or two curly strands invariably succeeded in escaping, to bounce against her cheeks. So frequently did she use her fingers to comb them back into place that she had ceased to be conscious of the gesture.

Like her brother, Midge was an enthusiast, although
her passion was not, like Gordon's, for the exploration of new territories, but for the exploration of the past. Often it seemed that her slight body, like a bottle of champagne awaiting disgorgement, housed an excess of energy which was liable at any moment to explode. Her physical energy she released twice a week on the hockey field. Her intellectual energy found a more surprising outlet in study. Midge Hardie was a bluestocking.

Like Archie Yates, many undergraduates did not even know that female students existed at Oxford. Elderly dons, who had fought a losing battle to prevent any concessions being made to them, thought them dangerous. Respectable wives and mothers thought them unladylike, and their conventional daughters thought them odd. Only within the past few weeks had permission been granted for them to take the same examinations as men in a limited number of subjects – and Midge knew that however hard-working or brilliant she might prove to be, she would still not be allowed to take a degree.

Nor, naturally, was there any question of her becoming a member of a college. One of her friends, disguising her gender by the use of initials, had a few years earlier entered for a scholarship examination and was placed at the head of the list; but she was not allowed to accept the scholarship. Within the past five years, Somerville Hall and Lady Margaret Hall had been established to provide residence for a few talented daughters of bishops or statesmen, wishing to pursue a course of study; but their teaching had to be organized by a committee devoted to the cause of women's education.

Midge was not a member of either Hall. Because her home was in Oxford it would have been absurd for her to pay residence fees, so she was isolated from the community spirit which developed amongst the two small groups.
But she didn't care. She found the study of history a pleasure in itself, and there was an additional excitement in the feeling that one by one the barriers against women were falling.

On the first Monday of Full Term in October 1885, for example, yet another door had opened to her. Dr Mackenzie, one of the most respected historians in the university, had agreed to supervise her studies. Her weekly hour with him would be called a coaching and not a tutorial, but Midge was not concerned about names. Her acceptance by such an eminent man was a triumph. She had worked her way through the list of books which he had sent her for vacation reading; but that did not prevent her from feeling nervous as well as excited as she stuck in three last hairpins to control her unruly hair, tied on her bonnet and went downstairs.

Mrs Lindsay, one of the chaperones officially provided for the Oxford home students, was already waiting to accompany her. Midge often wondered what the chaperones thought about as they knitted their way through lectures and coachings which appeared not to interest them in the slightest. It made an amusing fantasy to imagine one of them, after several years of silent attendance, suddenly putting her name down for one of the Final Examinations and proving to have absorbed more information than any of her young charges. But it was unlikely to be Mrs Lindsay, plump and gossipy, who would fulfil that particular fantasy. They set off together from the Holywell house for the short journey to Magdalen College.

Midge had already been warned that she and her chaperone must approach Dr Mackenzie's rooms through a side entrance to the college, because the porter would not admit her at the front. Determined not to be late, but
equally anxious neither to arrive too early nor to be seen lurking in the cloisters, she alternately hurried her companion up and held her back. So it was precisely as the hour was struck by the bells of half a dozen clocks that she reached Dr Mackenzie's staircase.

She was still studying the names on the boards, to discover where she should go, when a door above closed and a young man, tall and fair-haired, came down the stone steps two at a time. Instinctively Midge pressed herself back against the wall, out of sight. As an accepted pupil, punctually keeping an appointment, she had no reason to feel ashamed of her presence in the college; but it had been continually impressed on her in the past two years that she must deserve each new privilege without ever flaunting it amongst those who still opposed even the most peripheral presence of women in the university. She was not hiding, but nor did she wish to attract attention.

‘Phew!' said the young man to himself. It seemed that an ordeal of some kind had just been successfully survived. He tugged off his short commoner's gown and stuffed it under his arm. Some movement of Mrs Lindsay's must have caught his attention, for he glanced briefly at the two women and his eyes flickered with slight surprise at their presence. Surprise, but not interest. Like a young stallion released from its stable he seemed to sniff the air for a moment, testing its possibilities – and then, seeing another young man on the far side of the cloisters, hailed him with a shout and ran to catch him up.

Midge watched him disappear through an arch. He was the most handsome young man she had ever seen in her life. But she did not voice this thought aloud. In teasing arguments with her brother Gordon, she often professed herself unsure whether her chaperone was intended to protect her from the undergraduates or to protect the
undergraduates from the dangerous species of female students. But Mrs Lindsay would be quite clear about her duties. Under no circumstances was her charge ever to be alone with any male other than her father and brother, and even while chaperoned she could visit and be visited by only those gentlemen approved by her after proper introduction or authorized by the association to teach her. Even had Mrs Lindsay possessed a sense of humour, this was not a subject on which she could be expected to joke. Already thirty seconds late, Midge subdued the sparkle in her eyes, composed her expression into one of demure intelligence and walked sedately up the fifteen steps which led to Dr Mackenzie's door, ready for her first coaching.

From the beginning of the Michaelmas term until Christmas, and again throughout the Hilary term which began in the January of 1886, Midge Hardie presented herself punctually at the door of Dr Mackenzie's room in Magdalen for her Monday morning coachings. The rapid pace at which she left her home sometimes enveloped her in an atmosphere of rush and impetuosity. But this superficial impression was misleading, for she had a tidy, well-ordered mind and a determined and businesslike character. When she seemed to be hurrying, it was not because there was any danger of her being late, but merely that she could not bear to waste time by strolling.

To arrive too early for an appointment, of course, was equally a waste of time. This thought had fortunately not occurred to her chaperone, Mrs Lindsay, who showed no surprise when, on each Monday morning, she and her charge arrived at Magdalen College five minutes early for Dr Mackenzie's coaching.

Had anyone ever asked Midge the reason why, for this weekly occasion only, she arrived so early that she was forced to wait, shame would have flushed her cheeks. She had by now discovered from her tutor the name of the young man who bounded down the stairs just before her own coaching every Monday, but knew nothing more about him than that. So she could not pretend to admire the brilliance of his mind, the depth of his scholarship. It was humiliating to admit to herself that she was attracted to a stranger only because he was so good-looking, but
this was the simple truth. As she stood in an alcove at the foot of the staircase, with her face additionally shaded by the brim of her bonnet, she could feel reasonably sure that Mr Yates would not look in her direction; whilst she herself could gaze admiringly and wish that their paths might cross in some other way, some way which would enable them to become acquainted.

On this March morning of 1886 – the last Monday before the Easter vacation – the sun was shining brightly, making her place of concealment even darker than usual. Outside, in the meadows, daffodils were nodding their heads in bright clusters, whilst a curtain of weeping willows behind them sparkled with the new growth of their branches; but the gloom of the cloistered quadrangle in which she was waiting seemed not to have been disturbed for four hundred years. She exchanged a few words with her chaperone, commenting on this, and then listened with some surprise as the bells of half a dozen nearby colleges and churches chimed the hour, without any sign that Mr Yates's tutorial had come to an end. It was unusual for Dr Mackenzie to overrun his time.