A Question of Upbringing

4

PROLONGED, LUGUBRIOUS stretches of Sunday afternoon in a university town could be mitigated by attending Sillery’s tea-parties, to which anyone might drop in after half-past three. Action of some law of averages always regulated numbers at these gatherings to something between four and eight persons, mostly undergraduates, though an occasional don was not unknown. Towards the middle of my first term I was introduced to them by Short, who was at Sillery’s college, a mild second-year man, with political interests. Short explained that Sillery’s parties had for years played an established role in the life of the university; and that the staleness of the rock-buns, which formed a cardinal element of these at-homes, had become so hackneyed a subject for academical humour that even Sillery himself would sometimes refer to the perennially unpalatable essence of these fossils salvaged from some forgotten cake-world. At such moments Sillery would remind his guests of waggish or whimsical remarks passed on the topic of the rock-buns by an earlier generation of young men who had taken tea with him in bygone days: quoting in especial the galaxy of former undergraduate acquaintances who had risen to some eminence in later life, a class he held in unconcealed esteem.

Loitering about the college in aged sack-like clothes and Turkish slippers, his snow white hair worn longer than that of most of his colleagues, Sillery could lay claim to a venerable appearance: though his ragged, Old Bill moustache (which, he used laughingly to mention, had once been compared with Nietszche’s) was still dark. He was, indeed, no more than entering into his middle fifties: merely happening to find convenient a façade of comparative senility. At the beginning of the century he had published a book called City State and State of City which had achieved some slight success at a time when works popularising political science and economic theory were beginning to sell; but he was not ambitious to make his mark as an author. In fact one or two of his pupils used to complain that they did not receive even adequate tuition to get them through the schools at anything but the lowest level. This was probably an unjust charge, because Sillery was not a man to put himself easily in the wrong. In any case, circumstances had equipped him with such dazzling opportunity for pursuing his preponderant activity of interfering in other people’s business that only those who failed to grasp the extent of his potentiality in his own chosen sphere would expect — or desire — him to concentrate on a pedestrian round of tutorial duties.

Before my first visit, Short described some of this background with care; and he seemed to feel certain qualms of conscience regarding what he termed “Sillers’s snobisme.” He explained that it was natural enough that Sillery should enjoy emphasising the fact that he numbered among his friends and former pupils a great many successful people; and I fully accepted his plea. Short, however, was unwilling to encounter too ready agreement on this point, and he insisted that “all the same” Sillery would have been “a sounder man” — sounder, at any rate, politically — if he had made a greater effort to resist, or at least conceal, this temptation to admire worldly success overmuch. Short himself was devoted to politics, a subject in which I took little or no interest, and his keenest ambition was to become a Member of Parliament. Like a number of young men of that period, he was a Liberal, though to which of the various brands of Liberalism, then rent by schism, he belonged, I can no longer remember. It was this Liberal enthusiasm which had first linked him with Sillery, who had been on terms with Asquith, and who liked to keep an eye on a political party in which he had perhaps once himself placed hopes of advancement. Short also informed me that Sillery was a keen propagandist for the League of Nations, Czechoslovakia, and Mr. Gandhi, and that he had been somewhat diverted from earlier Gladstonian enthusiasms by the success of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Short had taken me to Sillery’s two or three times before I found myself — almost against my own inclination — dropping in there en Sunday afternoon. At first I was disposed to look on Sillery merely as a kind of glorified schoolmaster — a more easy going and amenable Le Bas — who took out the boys in turn to explore their individual characteristics to know better how to instruct them. This was a manner of regarding Sillery’s entertaining so crude as to be positively misleading. He certainly wanted to find out what the boys were like: but not because he was a glorified schoolmaster. His understanding of human nature, coarse, though immensely serviceable, and his unusual ingenuity of mind were both employed ceaselessly in discovering undergraduate connections which might be of use to him; so that from what he liked to call “my backwater” — the untidy room, furnished, as he would remark, like a boarding-house parlour — he sometimes found himself able to exercise a respectable modicum of influence in a larger world. That, at least, was how things must have appeared to Sillery himself, and in such activities his spirit was concentrated.

Clay, for example, was the son of a consul in the Levant. Sillery arranged a little affair through Clay which caused inconvenience, minor but of a most irritating kind, to Brightman, a fellow don unsympathetic to him, at that time engaged in archaeological digging on a site in the Near East. Lakin, outwardly a dull, even unattractive young man, was revealed as being related through his mother to an important Trade Union official. Sillery discovered this relative — a find that showed something like genius — and managed to pull unexpected, though probably not greatly important, strings when the General Strike came in 1926. Rajagopalaswarm’s uncle, noted for the violence of his anti-British sentiments, was in a position to control the appointment of a tutor to one of the Ruling Princes; Sillery’s nominee got the place. Dwight Wideman’s aunt was a powerful influence in the women’s clubs in America: a successful campaign was inaugurated to ban the American edition of a novel by an author Sillery disliked. Flannigan-Fitzgerald’s brother was a papal chamberlain: the Derwentwater annulment went through without a hitch. These, at least, were the things that people said; and the list of accessories could be prolonged with almost endless instances. All were swept into Sillery’s net, and the undergraduate had to be obscure indeed to find no place there. Young peers and heirs to fortune were not, of course, unwelcome; though such specimens as these — for whose friendship competition was already keen — were usually brought into the circle through the offices of secondary agents rather than by the direct approach of Sillery himself, who was aware that in a society showing signs of transition it was essential to keep an eye on the changing focus of power. All the same, if he was known to incline, on the whole, to the Right socially, politically he veered increasingly to the Left.

In the course of time I found that much difference of opinion existed as to the practical outcome of Sillery’s scheming, and I have merely presented the picture as first displayed to me through the eyes of Short. To Short, Sillery was a mysterious, politically-minded cardinal of the academical world, “never taking his tea without an intrigue” (that was the phrase Short quoted); for ever plotting behind the arras. Others, of course, thought differently, some saying that the Sillery legend was based on a kind of kaleidoscope of muddled information, collected in Sillery’s almost crazed brain, that his boasted powers had no basis whatever in reality: others again said that Sillery certainly knew a great number of people and passed round a lot of gossip, which in itself gave him some claim to consideration as a comparatively influential person, though only a subordinate one. Sillery had his enemies, naturally, always anxious to denigrate his life’s work, and assert that he was nothing more than a figure of fun; and there was probably something to be said at least for the contention that Sillery himself somewhat exaggerated the effectiveness of his own activities. In short, Sillery’s standing remained largely a matter of opinion; though there could be no doubt about his turning out to be an important factor in shaping Stringham’s career at the university.

Stringham had been due to come into residence the same term as myself, but he was thrown from a horse a day or two before his intended return to England, and consequently laid up for several months. As a result of the accident, he did not appear at his college until the summer when he took against the place at once. He could scarce be persuaded to visit other undergraduates, except one two that he had known at school, and he used to spend hours together sitting in his room, reading detective stork and complaining that he was bored. He had been given small car by his mother and we would sometimes drive round the country together, looking at churches or visiting pubs.

On the whole he had enjoyed Kenya. When I told him about Peter Templer and Gwen McReith — an anecdote that seemed to me of oustanding significance — he said: “Oh, well, that sort of thing is not as difficult as all that,” and he proceeded to describe a somewhat similar incident, in which, after a party, he had spent the night with the divorced wife of a coffee planter in Nairobi. In spite of Madame Dubuisson, this story made me feel very inexperienced. I described Suzette to him, but did not mention Jean Templer.

“There is absolutely nothing in it,” Stringham said. “It is just a question of keeping one’s head.”

He was more interested in what I had to report about Widmerpool, laughing a lot over Widmerpool’s horror on hearing the whole truth of Le Bas’s arrest. The narrative of the Scandinavians’ quarrel struck him only on account of the oddness of the tennis court on which we had been playing the set. This surprised me, because the incident had seemed of the kind to appeal to him. He had, however, changed a little in the year or more that had passed since I had seen him; and, although the artificial categories of school life were now removed, I felt for the first time that the few months between us made him appreciably older than myself. There was also the question of money — perhaps suggested by Widmerpool’s talk on that subject — that mysterious entity, of which one had heard so much and so often without grasping more than that its ownership was desirable and its lack inconvenient: heard of, certainly, without appreciating that its possession can become as much part of someone as the nose on the face. Even Uncle Giles’s untiring contortions before the altar of the Trust, when considered in this light, now began to appear less grotesque formerly; and I realised at last, with great clearness, that a sum like one hundred and eighty pounds a year might indeed be worth the pains of prolonged and acrimonious negotiation. Stringham was, in fact, not substantially richer than most undergraduates of his sort, and, being decidedly free with his money, was usually hard-up, but from the foothills of his background was, now and then, wafted the disturbing, aromatic perfume of gold, the scent which, even at this early stage in our lives, could sometimes be observed to act intoxicatingly on chance acquaintances; whose unexpected perseverance, and determination not to take offence, were a reminder that Stringham’s mother was what Widmerpool had described as “immensely wealthy.”

Peter Templer, as I have said, rarely wrote letters, so that we had, to some extent, lost touch with him. Left to himself there could be little doubt that he would, in Stringham’s phrase, “relapse into primeval barbarism.” Stringham often spoke of him, and used to talk, almost with regret, of the adventures they had shared at school: already, as it were, beginning to live in the past. Some inward metamorphosis was no doubt the cause of Stringham’s melancholia, because his attacks of gloom, although qualified by fairly frequent outbursts of high spirits, could almost be given that name. There was never a moment when he became reconciled to the life going on round him. “The buildings are nice,” he used to say. “But not the undergraduates.”

“What do you expect undergraduates to be like?”

“Keep bull-pups and drink brandies-and-soda. They won’t do as they are.”

“Your sort sound even worse.”

“Anyway, what can one do here? I am seriously thinking of running away and joining the Foreign Legion or the North-West Mounted Police — whichever work the shorter hours.”.

“It is the climate.”

“One feels awful if one drinks, and worse if one’s sober. I knew Buster’s picture of the jolly old varsity was not to be trusted. After all he never tried it himself.”

“How is he?”

“Doing his best to persuade my mother to let Glimber to an Armenian,” said Stringham, and speaking with perhaps slightly more seriousness: “You know, Tuffy was very much against my coming up.”

“What on earth did it have to do with her?”

“She takes a friendly interest in me,” said Stringham, laughing. “She behaved rather well when I was in Kenya as a matter of fact. Used to send me books, and odds and ends of gossip, and all that sort of thing. One appreciates that in the wide open spaces. She is not a bad old girl. Many worse.”

He was always a trifle on the defensive about Miss Weedon. I had begun to understand that his life at home was subject to exterior forces like Buster’s disapproval, or Miss Weedon’s regard, which brought elements of uncertainty and discord into his family life, not only accepted by him, but almost enjoyed. He went on: “There has been talk of my staying here only a couple of years and going into the Foot Guards. You know there is some sort of arrangement now for entering the army through the university. That was really my mother’s idea.”

“What does Miss Weedon think?”

“She favours coming to London and having a good time. I am rather with her there. The Household Cavalry has been suggested, too. One is said — for some reason — to ‘have a good time in The Tins’.”

“And Buster’s view?”

“He would like me to remain here as long as possible — four years, post-graduate course, research fellowship, anything so long as I stay away — since I shattered his dream that I might settle in Kenya.” It was after one of these conversations in which he had complained of the uneventfulness of his day that I suggested that we should drop in on Sillery.

“What is Sillery?”

I repeated some of Short’s description of Sillery, adding a few comments of my own.

“Oh, yes,” said Stringham. “I remember about him now. Well, I suppose one can try everything once.”

We were, as it happened, first to arrive at that particular party. Sillery, who had just finished writing a pile of letters, the top one of which, I could not avoid seeing, was addressed to a Cabinet Minister, was evidently delighted to have an opportunity to work over Stringham, whom he recognised immediately on hearing the name.

“How is your mother?” he said, “Do you know, I have not seen her since the private view of the Royal Academy in 1914. No, I believe we met later at a party given by Mrs. Hwfa Williams, if my memory serves me.”

He continued with a stream of questions, and for once Stringham, who had shown little interest in coming to the party, seemed quite taken aback by Sillery’s apparent familiarity with his circumstances.

“And your father?” said Sillery, grinning, as if in spite of himself, under his huge moustache. “Pretty well.”

“You were staying with him in Kenya?”

“For a few months.”

“The climate suits him all right?”

“I think so.”

“That height above sea-level is hard on the blood-pressure,” Sillery said; “but your father is unexpectedly strong in spite of his light build. Does that shrapnel wound of his ever give trouble?”

“He feels it in thundery weather.”

“He must take care of it,” said Sillery. “Or he will find himself on his back for a time, as he did after that spill on the Cresta. Has he run across Dicky Umfraville yet?”

“They see a good deal of each other.”

“Well, well,” said Sillery. “He must take care about that, too. But I must attend to my other guests, and not talk all the time about old friends.”

I had the impression that Sillery regarded Stringham’s father as a falling market, so far as business was concerned; and, although he did not mention Buster, he was evidently far more interested in Mrs. Foxe’s household than that of her former husband. However, the room was now filling up, and Sillery began introducing some of the new arrivals to each other and to Stringham and myself. There was a sad Finn — called as nearly as I could catch — Vaalkiipaa: Honthorst, an American Rhodes Scholar, of millionaire stock on both sides of his family: one of Sillery’s pupils, a small nervous young man who never spoke, addressed as “Paul,” whose surname I did not discover: and Mark Members, of some standing among the freshmen of my year, on account of a poem published in Public School Verse and favourably noticed by Edmund Gosse. Up to that afternoon I had only seen Members hurrying about the streets, shaking from his round, somewhat pasty face a brownish, uneven fringe that grew low on his forehead and made him look rather like a rag doll, or marionette: an air augmented by brown eyes like beads, and a sprinkling of freckles. His tie, a broad, loose knot, left the collar of his shirt a little open. I admired this lack of self-consciousness regarding what I then — rather priggishly — looked on as eccentricity of dress. He appeared to have known Sillery all his life, calling him “Sillers,” a form of address which, in spite of several tea-parties attended, I had not yet summoned courage to employ. The American, Honthorst’s, hair was almost as uncontrolled as that of Members. It stood up on the top of his head like the comb, or crest, of a hoopoe, or cassowary, this bird-like appearance being increased by a long, bare neck, ending in a white collar cut drastically low. Honthorst had a good-natured, dazed countenance, and it was hard to know what to say to him. Vaalkiipaa was older than the rest of the undergraduates present. He had a round, sallow face with high cheekbones, and, although anxious to be agreeable, he could not understand why he was not allowed to talk about his work, a subject always vetoed by Sillery.

Conversation was now mostly between Sillery and Members; with the awkward long silences which always characterised the teas. During one of these pauses, Sillery, pottering about the room with the plate of rock-buns, remarked: “There is a freshman named Quiggin who said he would take a dish of tea with me this afternoon. He comes from a modest home, and is, I think, a little sensitive about it, so I hope you will all be specially understanding with him. He is at one of the smaller colleges — I cannot for the moment remember which — and he has collected unto himself sundry scholarships and exhibitions, which is — I think you will all agree — much to his credit.”

This was a fairly typical thumb-nail sketch of the kind commonly dispensed by Sillery, in anticipation of an introduction: true as far as it went, though giving little or no clue to the real Quiggin: even less to the reason why he had been asked to tea. Indeed, at that period, I did not even grasp that there was always a reason for Sillery’s invitations, though the cause might be merely to give opportunity for preliminary investigation: sometimes not worth a follow-up.

No one, of course, made any comment after this speech about Quiggin, because there was really no suitable comment to make. The mention of scholarships once more started off Vaalkiipaa on the subject of his difficulties obtaining useful instruction from attendance at lectures while Honthorst, almost equally anxious to discuss educational matters in a serious manner, joined in on the question of gaps in the college library and — as he alleged — out-of-date methods of indexing. Honthorst persisted in addressing Sillery as “sir,” in spite of repeated requests from his host that he should discard this solecism. Sillery was deftly circumventing combined Finnish-American attack, by steering the conversation toward New England gossip by way of hunting in Maine — while at the same time extracting from Vaalkiipaa apparently unpalatable facts about the anti-Swedish movement in Finland — when Quiggin himself arrived: making his presence known by flinging open the door suddenly to its fullest extent, so that it banged against one of the bookcases, knocking over a photograph in a silver frame of three young men in top-hats standing in a row, arm-in-arm.

“Come in,” said Sillery, picking up the picture, and setting it back in its place. “Come in, Quiggin. Don’t be shy. We shan’t eat you. This is Liberty Hall. Let me introduce you to some of my young friends. Here is Mr. Cheston Honthorst, who has travelled all the way from America to be a member of my college: and this is Mr. Jenkins, reading history like yourself: and Mr. Stringham, who has been to East Africa, though his home is that beautiful house, Glimber: and Mr. Vaalkiipaa — rather a difficult name, which we shall soon find that we have all got so used to that we shan’t be able to understand how we ever found it difficult — and Paul, here, you probably know from Brightman’s lectures, which he tells me he loyally attends just as you do; and I nearly forgot Mr. Mark Members, whose name will be familiar to you if you like modern verse — and I am sure you do — so make a place on the sofa, Mark, and Quiggin can sit next to you.”

At first sight, Quiggin seemed to be everything suggested by Sillery’s description. He looked older than the rest of us: older, even, than Vaalkiipaa. Squat, and already going bald, his high forehead gave him the profile of a professor in a comic paper. His neck was encircled with a starched and grubby collar, his trousers kept up by a belt which he constantly adjusted. For the first time since coming up I felt that I was at last getting into touch with the submerged element of the university, which, I had sometimes suspected, might have more to offer than was to be found in conventional undergraduate circles. Mark Members was evidently impressed by a similar — though in his case unsympathetic — sense of something unusual so far as Quiggin was concerned; because he drew away his legs, hitherto stretched the length of the sofa, and brought his knees right up to his chin, clasping his hands round them in the position shown in a picture (that used to hang in the nursery of a furnished house we had once inhabited at Colchester) called The Boyhood of Raleigh; while he regarded Quiggin with misgiving.

“Couldn’t find the way up here for a long time,” said Quiggin.

He sat down on the sofa, and, speaking in a small, hard voice with a North Country inflexion, addressed himself to Members: seeming to be neither embarrassed by the company, nor by Sillery’s sledge-hammer phrases, aimed, supposedly, at putting him at his ease. He went on: “It’s difficult when you’re new to a place. I’ve been suffering a bit here” — indicating his left ear which was stuffed with yellowish cotton-wool —” so that I may not catch all you say too clearly.”

Members offered the ghost of a smile; but there could be no doubt of his uneasiness, as he tried to catch Sillery’s eye. However, Sillery, determined that his eye was not to be caught by Members, said: “The first year is a greaf period of discovery — and of self-discovery, too. What do you say, Vaalkiipaa? Can you find your way about yet?

“I make progress,” said Vaalkiipaa, unsmiling: to whom it was perhaps not clear whether Sillery’s question referred to discovery in the topographical sense or the more intimate interior examination with which Sillery had linked it. There was a silence, at the end of which Members put in, rather at random: “Sillers, it is too clever of you to buy a suit the same colour as your loose covers.”

Quiggin sat sourly on the extreme edge of the sofa, glancing round the room like a fierce little animal, trapped by naturalists. He had accepted a rock-bun from Sillery, and for some minutes this occupied most of his attention. Honthorst said: “They tell me the prospects for the college boat are pretty good, Professor Sillery.”

“Good,” said Sillery, making a deprecatory gesture in our direction to suggest his own unworthiness of this style of address. “Good. Very good.”

He said this with emphasis, though without in any way committing his opinion on the subject of current aquatics. It was evident that at present Quiggin was the guest who chiefly interested him. Stringham he must have regarded as already in his power because, although he smiled towards him in a friendly manner from time to time, he made no further effort to talk to him individually. Quiggin finished his rock-bun, closely watched by Sillery, picked some crumbs from his trousers, and from the carpet round him: afterwards throwing these carefully into the grate. Just as Quiggin had dealt with the last crumb, Members rose suddenly from the sofa and cast himself, with a startling bump, almost full length on the floor in front of the fireplace: exchanging in this manner his Boyhood-of-Raleigh posture for that of the Dying Gladiator. Sillery, whose back was turned, started violently, and Members pleaded: “You don’t mind, Sillers? I always lie on the floor.”

“I like my guests to feel at home, Mark,” said Sillery, recovering himself immediately, and playfully pinching the nape of Members’s neck between his finger and thumb, so that Members hunched his shoulders and squeaked shrilly.

“And you, Quiggin, are you happy?” Sillery asked.

Quiggin shook his head at the rock-buns, held out towards him once more; and, apparently taking the question to have a more general application than as a mere enquiry as to whether or not he wanted another cup of tea, or was comfortable sitting, as he was, at the springless end of the sofa, said in reply: “No, I’m not.” Sillery was enchanted with this answer.

“Not happy?” he said, as if he could not believe his ears.

“Never seem to get enough peace to get any work done,” said Quiggin. “Always somebody or other butting in.”

Sillery beamed, proffering the plate once more round the room, though without success. Quiggin, as if something, had been released within him, now began to enlarge on the matter of his own exasperation. He said: “All anyone here seems interested in is in messing about with some game or other, or joining some society or club, or sitting up all night drinking too much. I thought people came to the university to study, not to booze and gas all the time.”

“Very good, Quiggin, very good,” said Sillery. “You find we all fall woefully short of your own exacting standards — formed, no doubt, in a more austere tradition.”

He smiled and rubbed his hands, entranced. It even seemed that he might have been waiting for some such outburst on Quiggin’s part: and Quiggin himself somehow gave the air of having made the same speech on other occasions.

“What an extraordinary person,” said Members, under his breath, a remark probably audible only to myself, owing to the fact that the extreme lowness of the arm-chair in which I was sitting brought my ear almost level with Members’s mouth, as he rested with his elbow on the floor. Sillery said: “What do you think, Mark? Do you find that we are too frivolous?”

Members began to say: “My dear Sillers —” but, before he could speak the phrase, Sillery cut him short by adding: “I thought you might be in agreement with Quiggin as your homes are so close, Mark.”

After he had said this, Sillery stood back a bit, as if to watch the effect of his words, still holding the plate of rock-buns in his hand. If he had hoped to strike dismay into the hearts of his listeners, he could hardly have expected a more successful result so far as Quiggin and Members were concerned. Members, thoroughly, put out, went pink in the face; Quiggin’s expression became distinctly sourer than before, though he did not change colour. “I had a suspicion that neither of you was aware of this,” said Sillery. “But you must live practically in the same street.”

He nodded his head several times, and changed the subject; or, at least, varied it by asking if I had ever read Jude the Obscure. I realised, without achieving any true comprehension of what Sillery was about, that the object of revealing publicly that Members and Quiggin lived close to each other during the vacation was intended in some manner to bring both to heel: in any case I did not know enough of either at the time to appreciate that each might prefer that any details regarding his home life should be doled out by himself alone.

Sillery abandoned the subject after this demonstration of strength on his part, so that the rest of his guests were left in ignorance even of the name of the town Members and Quiggin inhabited. The American and the Finn slipped away soon after this, on the plea that they must work; in spite of protests from Sillery that no one could, or should, work on Sunday evening. As they were leaving, another visitor could be heard coming up the stairs. He must have stood aside for them to pass him, because a moment later, speaking in a resonant, musical voice, like an actor’s or practised after-dinner speaker’s, he said, as he came through the door: “Hallo, Sillers, I hoped I might catch you at home.”

This new arrival I recognised as Bill Truscott, who had gone down two or three years before. I had never previously met him, but I had seen him and knew his name well, because he was one of those persons who, from their earliest years, are marked down to do great things; and who so often remain a legend at school, or university, for a period of time after leaving the one or the other: sometimes long after any hope remains, among the world at large, that promise of earlier years will be fulfilled. Sillery was known to be deeply attached to Bill Truscott, though to what extent he inwardly accepted the claims put forward for Truscott’s brilliant future, it was not easy to say. Outwardly, of course, he was a strong promoter of these claims and, in some respects, Truscott could be described as the most characteristic specimen available of what Sillery liked his friends to be; that is to say he was not only successful and ambitious, but was also quite well off for a bachelor (a state he showed no sign of relinquishing), as his father, a Harley Street specialist, recently deceased, had left him a respectable capital. He had gained a good degree, though only by the skin of his teeth, it was rumoured, and, since academical honours represented a good deal of his stock-in-trade, this close shave regarding his “first” was sometimes spoken of as an ominous sign. However, the chief question seemed still to be how best his brilliance should be employed. To say that he could not make up his mind whether to become in due course Prime Minister, or a great poet, might sound exaggerated (though Short had so described Truscott’s dilemma), but in general he was at any rate sufficiently highly regarded in the university, by those who had heard of him, to make him appear a fascinating, and almost alarming, figure.

After sitting down beside Sillery, Truscott at first hardly spoke at all; but at the same time his amused smile acted as a sort of charm on the rest of the company, so that no one could possibly have accused him, on the grounds of this silence, of behaving in an ungracious manner. He was tall and dark, with regular features, caught rather too close together, and the most complete self-assurance that can be imagined. His clothes and hair, even his face, seemed to give out a kind of glossiness, and sense of prosperity, rather like Monsieur Lundquist’s. He was already going a little grey, and this added to his air of distinction, preventing him from looking too young and inexperienced. I addressed a remark to him which he acknowledged simply by closing and opening his eyes, making me feel that, the next time I spoke, I ought to make an attempt to find something a trifle less banal to say: though his smile at the same time absolved me from the slightest blame in falling so patently short of his accustomed standards. I was not conscious of being at all offended by this demeanour: on the contrary, Truscott’s comportment seemed a kind of spur to encourage all who came to win his esteem; although — and perhaps because — he was obviously prepared to offer nothing in return.

If Bill Truscott’s arrival in the room made a fairly notable impression on myself, chiefly on account of the glowing picture Short had drawn of his charm and brilliance, the rest of Sillery’s party treated Truscott, if possible, with even closer attention. Members moved unobtrusively from the floor to a chair, and Quiggin, one of the legs of whose trousers had rucked up, revealing long hirsute pants of grey material, pulled the end of his trouser down towards a black sock, and sat more upright on the sofa. Both he and Members evidently felt that the opportunity had now arrived for Sillery’s disclosure regarding the adjacency of their respective homes to be forgotten in discussion of more important matters. Stringham turned out to know Truscott already. He said: “Hallo, Bill,” and for a minute or two they spoke of some party in London where they had met a month or two before.

“You must tell us about the polite world, Bill,” said Sillery, perching on the side of Truscott’s chair and slipping an arm round his shoulder. “Fancy the hostesses allowing you to steal away from their clutches and drop in to visit us here.”

Sillery made this remark gently, through his teeth, so that it was not easy to say whether he intended a compliment, an enquiry, or even an expression of disparagement of the fact that Truscott could spare time for dons and undergraduates at this stage of the Season; when a career had still to be carved out. Truscott certainly accepted the words as tribute to his popularity, and he threw his head back with a hearty laugh to express how great a relief it was for him to escape, even for a short period, from the world of hostesses thus somewhat terrifyingly pictured by Sillery: though he was, at the same time, no doubt aware that a more detailed explanation was required of him to show conclusively that his appearance in the university was due to nothing so ominous as lacking something better to do. “I have really come on business, Sillers,” he said.

“Indeed?”

“I saw no reason why I should not combine business with pleasure, Sillers. As you know, Pleasure before Business has always been my motto.”

“Pleasure can be so exhausting,” put in Members, fixing Truscott with a winning smile, and thrusting his face forward a little.

However, he seemed a little uncertain, apart from his smile, how best to captivate someone of Truscott’s eminence; though clearly determined to make an impression before the opportunity was past. Truscott, for his part, glanced attentively at Members: an appraisal that seemed to result in the decision that, although outwardly Members had not much to offer that was to Truscott’s taste, there might be elements not to be despised intellectually. Sillery watched their impact with evident interest. He said: “I expect you read Iron Aspidistra, Bill.”

Truscott nodded; but without producing any keen sense of conviction.

“Mark’s poem,” said Sillery, “It received quite a favourable reception.”

“Surrounded as usual by a brilliant circle of young men, Sillers,” said Truscott, laughing loudly again. “To tell you the truth, Sillers, I have come up to look for a young man myself.”

Sillery chuckled, pricking up his ears. Truscott stretched out his legs languidly. There was a pause, and muted laughter from the rest of the guests. Truscott looked round, archly.

“For my boss as a matter of fact,” he said.

He laughed quietly to himself this time, as if that were a good joke. Quiggin, who had been silent all the while, though not unattentive, spoke unexpectedly in his grating voice: “Who is ‘your boss’?” he asked.

I could not help admiring the cool way in which Truscott turned slowly towards Quiggin, and said, without the slightest suggestion of protest at Quiggin’s tone: “He is called Sir Magnus Donners.”

“The M.P.?”

“I fear that, at the moment, he cannot be so described.”

“But you work for him?” insisted Quiggin.

“Sir Magnus is kind enough to remunerate me as if I worked for him,” said Truscott. “But you know, really, I scarcely like to describe myself as doing anything that suggests such violent exertions undertaken on his behalf. He is, in any case, the kindest of masters.”

He cocked an eyebrow at Quiggin, apparently not at all displeased by this rather aggressive inquisition. As Truscott had not witnessed Quiggin’s arrival and earlier behaviour at the tea-party, I decided that he must find him less odd than he appeared to the rest of us: the thought perhaps he classed all undergraduate opinion together as inchoate substance, not to be handled too closely, occurring to me only several years later, after I had come down from the university. Sillery said: “I don’t expect “your master,” as you call him, would have much difficulty in returning to the House at any by-election, would he, Bill?”

“His industrial interests take up so much time these days,” said Truscott. “And really one must admit that ability of his sort is rather wasted in the House of Commons.”

“Isn’t he going to get a peerage?” said Stringham, unexpectedly.

Truscott smiled.

“Always a possibility,” he said; and Sillery grinned widely, rubbing his hands together, and nodding quickly several times.

“It’s a mortal shame that a big concern like his should be in the hands of a private individual,” said Quiggin, increasing the volume of his North Country accent, and speaking as if he were delivering the opening words of a sermon or address.

“Do you think so?” said Truscott. “Some people do. Of course, Sir Magnus himself has very progressive ideas, you know.”

“I think you would be surprised, Quiggin, if you ever met Sir Magnus,” said Sillery, “He has even surprised me at times.”

Quiggin looked as if there was nothing he would like better than to have an opportunity to meet Sir Magnus; but Sillery, who probably feared that conversation might decline from the handling of practical matters, like the disposal of jobs, to one of those nebulous discussions of economic right and wrong, of which he approved in general but obviously considered inopportune at that moment, brought back the subject of Truscott’s opening statement by saying: “And so Sir Magnus wants a man, does he?” However, Truscott was not disposed to say more of that for the time being. He may even have thought that he had already given away too much. His manner became perceptibly less frivolous, and he said: “I’ll tell you about it later, Sillers.”

Sillery concurred. It was probable that he, too, would prefer the details to be given in private. However, he evidently regarded the acquisition of further information on this matter to be of prime importance; because a minute or two later his impatience got the better of him, and, rising from the arm of Truscott’s chair, he announced: “Bill and I are a pair of very old friends who haven’t seen each other for many a long day, so that now I am going to drive you all out into the wind and rain in order that Bill and I can have a chat about matters that would no doubt appear to you all as very tedious.”

He put his head a little on one side. Neither Members nor Quiggin seemed very satisfied by this pronouncement: not at all convinced that they would find any such conversation tedious. Members tried to make some sort of protest by saying: “Now, Sillers, that is really too bad of you, because you promised that you were going to show me your Gerard Manley Hopkins letter the next time I came to see you.”

“And I wanted to borrow Fabian Essays, if it wasn’t troubling you,” said Quiggin, very sulky.

“Another time, Mark, another time,” said Sillery. “And you will find your book in that shelf, Quiggin, with the other Webbs. Take great care of it, because it’s a first edition with an inscription.”

Sillery was not at all discomposed, indeed he seemed rather flattered, by these efforts on the part of Members and Quiggin to stay and make themselves better known to Truscott; but he was none the less determined that they should not stand between him and the particulars of why Sir Magnus Donners wanted a young man; and what sort of a young man Sir Magnus Donners wanted, He made a sweeping movement with his hands, as if driving chickens before him in a farmyard, at the same time remarking to Stringham: “You must come here again soon. There are things I should like to discuss interesting to ourselves.”

He turned quickly, to prevent Quiggin from taking too many of his books, and, at the same time, to say something to the depressed undergraduate called Paul. Stringham and I went down the stairs, followed by Mark Members, who, having failed to prolong his visit, seemed now chiefly interested in escaping from Sillery’s without having the company of Quiggin thrust upon him. All three of us left the college through an arched doorway that led to the street. Rain had been falling while we were at tea, but the pavements were now drying under a woolly sky.

“What very Monet weather it has been lately,” said Members, almost to himself. “I think I must hurry ahead now as I am meeting a friend.”

He disappeared into a side street, his yellow tie caught up over his shoulder, his hands in his pockets and elbows pressed to his sides. In a moment he was lost to sight.

“That must be a lie,” said Stringham. “He couldn’t possibly have a friend.”

“What was Truscott after?”

“He is rather a hanger-on of my mother’s,” said Stringham. “Said to be very bright. He certainly gets about.”

“And Sir Magnus Donners?”

“He was in the Government during the war.”

“What else?”

“He is always trying to get in with my mother, too.”

I had the impression that Stringham was himself quite interested in Bill Truscott, who certainly suggested the existence of an exciting world from which one was at present excluded. We strolled on through the empty streets towards Stringham’s college. The air was damp and warm. At the top of the stairs, the sound of voices came from the sitting-room. Stringham paused at the door.

“Somebody has got in,” he said. “I hope it is not the Boys’ Club man again.”

He stood for a moment and listened; then he opened the door. There was a general impression of very light grey flannel suits and striped ties, which resolved itself into three figures, sitting smoking, one of whom was Peter Templer.

“Peter.”

“Bob Duport and Jimmy Brent,” said Peter, nodding towards the other two. “We thought we would pay a call, to see how your education was getting along.”

He was looking well: perhaps a shade fatter in the face than when I had last seen him; and, having now reached the age for which Nature had, as it were, intended him, he was beginning to lose the look of a schoolboy dressed as a grown man. I should have known Duport and Brent anywhere as acquaintances of Peter’s. They had that indefinable air of being up to no good that always characterised Peter himself. Both were a few years older than he; and I vaguely remembered some story of Duport having been involved in a motor accident, notorious for some reason or other. That affair, whatever it was, had taken place soon after he had left school: during my own first year there. He was built on similar lines to Peter, thin and tall, with sandy hair, dressed in the same uncompromising manner, though on the whole less successfully. Brent was big and fat, with spectacles that seemed to have been made with abnormally small circles of glass. Both, it turned out, were business friends, working in the City. They accepted some of Stringham’s sherry, and Brent, whose manners seemed on the whole better than Duport’s, said: “What do they rush you for this poison?”

The sum was not revealed, because, almost at the same moment, Duport, who was examining The Pharisee’s rider, in one of the pictures, that had followed Stringham to this room, remarked: “I’ve never seen a jock on land, or sea, sit a horse like that.”

“Put your shirt on him when you do, Bob,” said Peter. “You may recoup a bit on some of those brilliant speculations of yours that are always going to beat the book.”

“How long are you staying?” asked Stringham, before Duport had time to defend his racing luck.

“Going back to London after dinner.”

I saw that any change that I might have suspected of taking place in the relationship between Templer and I Stringham had by now crystallised. It was not that they no longer liked one another, or even that they had ceased to take pleasure in each other’s company, so much as the fact that each had grown out of the other’s habit of mind: and, in consequence, manner of talking. Stringham had become quieter than he had been at school; though he was, at the same time, more than ever anxious for something new to happen at comparatively short intervals, in order that his attention should be occupied, and depression kept at arm’s length. Peter had changed less: merely confirming his earlier attitude towards life. I did not know to what extent, if at all, he was aware of any difference in Stringham. He knew Stringham well, and I could imagine him describing — and laughing over — the warming-up process that seemed to be required that evening: a warming-up that never took place so far as Stringham was concerned. I could, equally, imagine Stringham laughing at the way in which Peter was already shaping along the lines that Stringham had himself so accurately foretold.

“We might all have dinner together,” Stringham said. “That was the idea.”

In the restaurant, Stringham and I talked to Peter, rather fragmentarily: mainly on the subject of Stringham’s stay in Kenya. Duport and Brent grunted to each other from time to time, or, occasionally, to Peter: no sense of fusion quickening the party. Peter told us about his car, recently bought second-hand, and considered a bargain.

“I must take you for a proper run in her,” he said, “before we go back.”

“Don’t forget I want to look in at the Cabaret Club before we hit the hay,” said Brent.

Duport said: “He’s got a girl there who owes him some money.”

“I wish she did,” said Brent: but without elucidating further that cryptic aspiration.

The Vauxhall was, in fact, clearly the foundation of this unpremeditated visit. Peter wanted to try the vehicle out. He continued to assure us how cheap the price had been, inviting admiration of its many good points. This car was adapted for speed, having had the windscreen removed; but it had all the appearance of having passed through a good many hands since the days of its first owner. It certainly put Stringham’s two-seater in the shade, and perhaps slightly irritated Stringham on this account. Peter was immensely pleased with the Vauxhall, the purchase of which seemed in some way to have involved Brent. As the evening wore on, Brent’s personality became in other respects more determinable. For example, he talked incessantly of women. Peter and Duport treated this preoccupation as something not to be taken at all seriously, making no attempt to hide their concurrent opinion that Brent’s attempts to make himself agreeable to girls were entirely unsuccessful: all of which Brent took in fairly good part. His voice managed to be at once deep and squeaky; and he spoke repeatedly of a woman called Flora, who appeared in some manner to have behaved badly to him. On the whole he was undoubtedly preferable to Duport, whose demeanour was aggressive and contradictious. I was not surprised when Duport announced: “Couldn’t stand my place at all. Got sent down my first term. Still it looks worse here.”

I enquired about Jean.

“She’s all right,” Peter said. “In love with a married man twice her age.”

“Is that the sister I’m after?” asked Duport. “That’s the one.”

Towards the end of the meal, things improved a little; though Stringham and I seemed now to know Templer on an entirely different footing from that of the past. Finally, I felt even glad that Duport and Brent had increased the numbers of the party, because their presence alleviated, if it did not conceal, the change that had taken place. Peter was still anxious that we should see how fast the car would travel on a piece of open road, and he promised to deliver us back by midnight; so, after dinner was finished, we agreed to go with him. Stringham and I climbed into the back of the Vauxhall with Duport, not through choice, but because there was more room for everyone if Brent occupied the seat beside the driver. We moved off sharply in the direction of unfrequented roads. I lay back, wishing the seat had been roomy enough to allow sleep. Duport smoked sullenly: Stringham, on the other side of me, was silent: Brent had returned to the subject of Flora, though without receiving much outward sympathy from Peter. We had reached the outskirts of the town, and the car was gathering speed, when — without clearly taking in the meaning of the words — I heard Brent say: “Let’s pick up those two pieces.”

I was scarcely aware that Peter had slowed down, when we stopped with a jerk by the kerb, where, beside a pillar-box at the corner of a side road, two girls were standing. They were wearing flowered dresses, blue and pink respectively, with hats of the same material. Their faces were those of a couple of Dutch dolls. Brent, from the front seat, twisted himself round towards them.

“Would you like to come for half an hour’s drive?” he asked, in his unattractive voice, high and oily. The girls raised no difficulty whatever about falling in with this suggestion. There was not even any giggling to speak of. They jumped in immediately, one of them sitting in front, on Brent’s knee; the other joining the three of us at the back, where there was already little enough room to spare. They answered to the names of Pauline and Ena. Ena sat sideways, mainly on Duport, but with her legs stretched across my own knees: her feet, in tight high-heeled shoes, on Stringham’s lap. This was a situation similar to many I had heard described, though never previously experienced. In spite of its comparative discomfort, I could not help feeling interest — and some slight excitement — to see how matters would develop. Stringham was obviously not very pleased by the additional company, which left him without the doubtful advantage of any substantial share in either of the girls; but he made the best of things, even attempting some show of pinching Ena’s ankles. Neither of the girls had much conversation. However, they began to squeal a little when the car arrived on a more open piece of road, and the engine gathered speed.

“You must admit it was a good buy,” shouted Peter, as we did about seventy-five or eighty.

“All the same we might be returning soon,” said Stringham. “My physician is insistent that I should not stay up late after my riding accident — especially with anyone, or part of anyone, on my knee.”

“We ought to be getting back, too,” said Duport, freeing himself, apparently dissatisfied, from Ena’s long embrace. “Otherwise it will be tomorrow before we get to London.”

“All right,” said Peter,” we will turn at the next crossroads.”

It was on the homeward journey, after making this turn, that the mishap occurred. Peter was not driving specially fast, but the road, which was slippery from rain fallen earlier in the evening, took two hairpin bends; and, as we reached the second of these, some kind of upheaval took place within the car. No one afterwards could explain exactly what happened, though the accepted supposition was that Brent, engaged in kissing Pauline, had disturbed her susceptibilities in some manner, so that she had drawn herself unexpectedly away from him; and, in his effort to maintain their equilibrium, Brent had thrust her against Peter’s elbow, in such a way that her head obscured the view. That, at least, was one of the main theories afterwards propounded. Whatever the root of the trouble, the memorable consequence was that Peter — in order to avoid a large elm tree — drove into the ditch: where the car stopped abruptly, making a really horrible sound like a dying monster; remaining stuck at an angle of forty-five degrees to the road.

This was an unpleasant surprise for everyone. The girls could not have made more noise if they had been having their throats cut. Brent, too, swore loudly, in his almost falsetto voice, natural or assumed to meet the conditions of the moment; though, as it happened, he and Pauline, perhaps owing to their extreme proximity to each other, were the only two members of the party who, when we had at last all succeeded in making our way out of the Vauxhall, turned out to be quite unhurt. Stringham was kicked in the face by Ena, who also managed to give Duport a black-eye by concussion between the back of her head and his forehead. Peter bruised his knuckles against the handle of the door. Ena complained of a broken arm from the violence with which Duport had seized her as the car went over the edge. My own injuries were no worse than a sharp blow on the nose from Ena’s knee. However, we were all shaken up more than a little; and, as one of the wheels had buckled, the car clearly could not be driven back that night. There had been some difficulty in getting out of the ditch, and, as I stepped up on to the road, I felt the first drop of rain. Now it began to pour. This was an exceedingly inconvenient occurrence from everyone’s point of view. Probably Stringham and I were in the most awkward position, as there seemed no prospect of either of us reaching college by the required hour; and it would not be easy to convince the authorities that nothing of which they might disapprove had taken place to make us late: or even to keep us out all night, if things should turn out so badly. The girls were, presumably, accustomed to late hours if they were in the habit of accepting lifts at that time of night; but for them, too, this was an uncomfortable situation. Such recrimination that took place was about equally divided between Peter’s two friends and Ena and Pauline: although I knew that, in fact, Stringham was far the angriest person present. Rain now began to fall in sheets. We moved in a body towards the elm tree.

“Of all the bloody silly things to do,” said Brent. “You might have killed the lot of us.”

“I might easily,” said Peter, who was always well equipped for dealing with friends of Brent’s kind. “I wonder I didn’t with a lout like you in the boat. Haven’t you ever had a girl sitting on your knee before, that you have to heave her right across the car, just because there is a slight bump in the road?”

“What did you want to get a lot of girls in the car for, anyway?” asked Duport, who was holding a rolled-up handkerchief to his eye. “If you weren’t capable of steering?”

“I didn’t ask for them.”

“You ought to have some driving lessons.”

Peter replied with a reference to the time when Duport was alleged to have collided with a lamp-post at Henley; and they both went on like this for some minutes. Pauline and Ena, the former of whom was crying, also made a good deal of noise, while they lamented the difficulty of getting home, certainly an insoluble problem as matters stood.

“How far out are we?” Stringham asked, “and what is the time?”

The hour was a quarter-past eleven; the general view, that we had come about a dozen miles. There was a chance that a car might pass, but we were a large party to be accommodated. In any case, there was no sign of a car. Stringham said: “We had better make plans for camping out. Brent, you look good at manual labour — will you set to work and construct a palisade?”

“You didn’t ought to have brought us here,” said Pauline.

Ena, still complaining of a torn stocking, and bruises on her arm, cried into her handbag. Peter and Duport moved round the car, pulling and pushing its outer surface, or opening the bonnet to inspect the engine. Brent sat panting to himself on the bank.

Peter said: “The rain seems to be stopping. We may as well walk in the right direction. There is no point in staying here.”

There was not much enthusiasm for this suggestion; and, when attempted, the heel came off one of Ena’s shoes, in any case not adapted to a twelve-mile march.

“Can’t we change the wheel?” said Duport. We struggled with the problem of the wheel from different angles of approach. It was impossible to wind the jack into position under the axle. We only managed to embed the car more firmly than ever in the side of the ditch. While we were engaged in these labours, rain began to fall again, a steady, soaking downpour. Once more we retired to the tree, and waited for the shower to clear.

“What a bloody silly thing to do,” said Duport.

“Almost as brilliant as the time you fell into the orchestra on Boat-Race Night.”

Stringham said: “For my part, I am now in a perfect condition to be received into one of those oriental religions whose only tenet is complete submission to Fate.”

He joined Brent on the bank, and sat with his head in his hands. A minute or two after this, the miracle happened.

There was a grinding noise farther up the road, and the glare of powerful headlights appeared. It was a bus. Brent, with surprising agility for so fat a man, jumped up from where he was sitting, and ran out into the centre of the road, holding his arms wide apart as if in supplication. He was followed by Duport, apparently shaking his fist. I felt little interest in possible danger of their being run over: only a great relief that the bus must in any case come to a standstill, whether they were killed or not.

Stringham said: “What did I foretell? Kismet. It is the Wheel.”

The bus stopped some yards short of Brent. We all clambered up the steps. Inside, the seats were almost empty, and no one seemed to realise from what untold trouble we had all been rescued. The girls now recovered quickly, and were even anxious to make an assignation for another night. They were, however, both set down (with no more than a promise from Brent that he would look them up if again in that neighbourhood) at a point not far from the pillar-box from which they had embarked on that unlucky drive. We reached the centre of the town: Templer, Brent, and Duport still quarrelling among themselves about which hotel they should patronise, and arguing as to whether or not it was worth ringing up a garage that night to arrange for the repair of the Vauxhall. This discussion was still in progress when we left the bus. Stringham and I said good night to them.

“I’m sorry to have landed you in all this,” Peter said.

“You must come for a drive with us sometime,” said Stringham. “Anyway, we’ll meet soon.”

But I knew that they would not meet soon; and that this was a final parting. Peter, I think, knew this too. A crescent moon came from behind clouds. The others disappeared from sight. Stringham said: “What a jolly evening, and what nice friends Peter makes.” The clocks were striking midnight at different places all over the town as I stepped through the door of my college. The rain had cleared. Moonlight gave the grass and towers an air of unreality, as if all would be removed in the morning to make way for another scene. My coat hung on me, shapeless and soggy, the damp working down through the cloth to my shoulders.

*

This incident with Templer’s car had two results, so far as Stringham was concerned: it brought an end to his friendship with Peter, and it immensely strengthened his desire to go down as soon as possible from the university. In fact, he was now unwilling even to consider the possibility of staying in residence long enough to take a degree. It was one of those partings of the ways that happen throughout life: in this case, foretold by Peter himself. No doubt Peter, too, had guessed that something had ended, and that his prophecy had come true, while the rain dripped down on all of us, through the branches of that big elm, while we stood in the shadows of the ditch regarding the stranded Vauxhall.

When I say that their friendship came to an end, I do not mean that Stringham no longer spoke of Templer; nor that, when he talked of him, it was with dislike: nor even, in a sense, with disapproval. On the contrary, he used to refer to Peter as frequently as he had done in the past; and the story of the drive, the crash, Ena and Pauline, Brent and Duport, was embroidered by him until it became a kind of epic of discomfort and embarrassment: at the same time, something immensely funny in the light of Peter’s chosen manner of life. Nevertheless, there could be no doubt whatever that metamorphosis had taken place; and, sometimes, it was almost as if Stringham were speaking of a friend who had died, or gone beyond the sea to a place from which he would never return. Once he said: “How appalling Peter will be in fifteen years’ time;” and he never spoke, as formerly he had done, of arranging a meeting between the three of us in London.

I was even aware that, in an infinitely lesser degree, I could not avoid being unfavourably included by Stringham in this reorientation which, almost necessarily, affected anyone who was at once a friend of Peter’s and a fellow undergraduate, fated to remain up for at least three years: both characteristics reminding Stringham of sides of life from which he was determined to cut away. Besides, for my own part I shared none of this sense of having seen the last of Peter; though even I had to admit that I did not care for the idea of spending much of my time with his present acquaintances, if Brent and Duport were typical representatives of his London circle. The extent to which Stringham had resolved to settle his own career was brought home to me one morning, through the unexpected agency of Quiggin, next to whom I found myself sitting, when attending one of Brightman’s lectures, at which I had not been appearing so regularly as perhaps I should.

On this occasion Quiggin walked back with me towards my college, though without relaxing the harsh exterior he had displayed when we had first met at Sillery’s. He seemed chiefly concerned to find out more about Mark Members.

“Where does his stuff appear?” he asked.

“What stuff?”

“His poems have been published, haven’t they? Why ‘Public’?” said Quiggin. “Why ‘Public’ School Verse? Why not just ‘School Verse’?”

I was unable to answer that one; and suggested that such a title must for some reason have have appealed to the editors, or publisher, of the volume.

“It is not as if they were ‘public’ schools,” said Quiggin. “They could not be less ‘public’.”

I had heard this objection voiced before, and could only reply that such schools had to have a name of some sort. Quiggin stopped, stuck his hands into his pockets (he was still wearing his black suit) and poked his head forward. He looked thin and unhealthy: undernourished, perhaps. “Have you got a copy?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Can I borrow it?”

“All right.”

“Now?”

“If you like to come with me.”

We undertook the rest of the journey to my rooms in silence. Arrived there, Quiggin glanced around at the furnishings, as if he did not rate very highly the value of the objects provided by the college to sit, or lie, upon. They were, indeed, shabby enough. Standing by the bookcase, he took out the copy of Public School Verse, which he had lighted upon immediately, and began to run rapidly through the rest of the books.

“Do you know Members well?” he asked.

“I’ve met him once, since we were at Sillery’s.”

This encounter with Members had been at a luncheon party given by Short, where Members had much annoyed and mortified his host by eating nearly all the strawberries before the meal began. In addition, he had not spoken at all during luncheon, leaving before the coffee was served, on the grounds that he had to play the gramophone to himself for half an hour every afternoon; and that, unless he withdrew at once, he would not have time for his music owing to a later engagement. Short, for a mild man, had been quite cross. “I understand that Members is a coming poet,” said Quiggin.

I agreed that Iron Aspidistra showed considerable promise. Quiggin gloomily turned the pages of the collection. He said: “I’d be glad to meet Members again.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to answer that he was almost certain to do this, sooner or later, if their homes were so close; but, as Quiggin evidently meant there and then, rather than in the vacation, I thought it wiser to leave the remark unmade. I promised to let him know if a suitable occasion should arise, such as Members visiting my rooms, though that seemed improbable after his behaviour at Short’s luncheon party.

“Can I take The Green Hat too?” asked Quiggin.

“Don’t lose it.”

“It is all about fashionable life, isn’t it?”

“Well, yes.”

I had myself not yet fully digested the subject matter of The Green Hat, a novel that I felt painted, on the whole, a sympathetic picture of what London had to offer: though much of the life it described was still obscure to me. I was surprised at Quiggin asking for it. He went on: “In that case I do not expect that I shall like it. I hate anything superficial. But I will take the book and look at it, and tell you what I think of the writing.”

“Do.”

“I suppose that it depicts the kind of world that your friend Stringham will enter when he joins Donners-Brebner,” said Quiggin, as he continued to inspect the book shelf.

“How do you mean?”

“Well you must have heard that he has taken the job that Truscott was talking about at Sillery’s. Surely he has told you that?”

“What, with Sir Magnus Donners?” It was no use pretending that I knew something of this already. I was, indeed, so surprised that only after Quiggin had gone did I begin to feel annoyance.

“I should have thought he would have told you,” said Quiggin.

“Where did you hear this?”

“At Sillery’s, of course. Sillery says Stringham is just the man.”

“He probably is.”

“Of course,” said Quiggin, “I knew at once there would be no chance of Truscott thinking of me. Not good enough, by any manner of means, I suppose.”

“Would you have liked the job?”

I did not know what else to say: the idea of Quiggin being the sort of man Truscott was looking for seeming to me so grotesque.

Quiggin did not bother to reply to this question. He merely repeated, with a sniff: “Not good enough by a long chalk,” adding: “You might come and see me some time in my college, if you can find the way to it. You won’t get any priceless port, or anything like that.”

I said that I was not particularly fond of port; and began to give an account of my likes and dislikes in the matter of wine, which Quiggin, with what I now see as excusable impatience, cut short by saying: “I live very quietly. I can’t afford to do otherwise.”

“Neither can I.”

Quiggin did not answer. He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a lack of affluence that might, literally, affect my purchase of rare vintages, and a figure of speech intended delicately to convey his own dire want for the bare necessities of life. He remained silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he could ever bring himself to speak to me again; and then said gruffly: “I’ve got to go now.”

As he went off, all hunched up on one side with Public School Verse and The Green Hat under his arm, I felt rather ashamed of myself for having made such a thoughtless remark. However, I soon forgot about this, at the time, in recalling the news I had learnt about Stringham, which I wanted to verify as soon as possible. In general, however, I continued to feel an interest in Quiggin, and the way he lived. He had something of the angry solitude of spirit that held my attention in Widmerpool.

Stringham, when I next saw him, seemed surprised at the importance with which I invested his decision.

“I thought I’d told you,” he said. “As a matter of fact it isn’t finally fixed yet. What awful cheek of your friend Quiggin, if I may say so.”

“What do you think of him?”

“The man is a closed book to me,” Stringham said. “And one that I confess I have little temptation to open. Bill Truscott, on the other hand, was rather impressed.”

“With Quiggin?”

“Curiously enough.”

“Will you work with Truscott?”

“I shall be the other personal secretary.”

“Did Sillery put up the suggestion?”

“He is very keen on it. He agrees one’s family will have to be consulted.”

“Will your family raise difficulties?”

“For once,” said Stringham, “I don’t think they will. My mother will at last see hopes of getting me settled in life. Buster — most mistakenly — will suppose this to be the first step on the stair to a seat on the Donners-Brebner Board. My father will be filled with frank astonishment that I should be proving myself capable of earning a living in any capacity whatsoever.”

“What about a degree?”

“Bill Truscott reports Sir Magnus as demanding who the hell wants a degree these days; and saying all he needs is men who know the world, and can act and think quickly.”

“Strong stuff.”

“I suppose I can take lessons from Bill.”

“Then you won’t come up next term?”

“Not if I can avoid it.”

Sillery’s part in this matter was certainly of interest. He might have been expected — as Stringham himself agreed — to encourage as many undergraduates as possible to remain, for as long as possible, within his immediate range. Later on, however, I began to understand something of his reasons for recommending this course. If Stringham remained at the university, it was probable that he would fall under influences other than — and alien to — Sillery’s. Even if he remained Sillery’s man, he was obviously a person who might easily get involved in some scrape for which Sillery (if too insistent on taking Stringham under his wing) might be held in some degree answerable. Placed in a key position in Donners-Brebner — largely due to Sillery’s own recommendation — Stringham could not only supply news of that large concern, but could also keep an eye on Sillery’s other man, Truscott. In due course Sillery would no doubt find himself in a position to renew acquaintance in most satisfactory conditions. In short, power without responsibility, could hardly be offered to Sillery, within this limited sphere, upon cheaper terms. Such a series of crude images would scarcely have suggested themselves in quite this manner to Sillery’s mind — still less did I see them myself in any such clarity — but the apparent paradox of why Sillery threw in his weight on the side of Stringham’s going-down became in due course comparatively plain to me.

“Anyway,” said Stringham, “you’ll be in London yourself soon.”

“I suppose so.”

“Then we’ll have some fun.”

Somehow, I felt doubts about this. Life no longer seemed to present quite the same uncomplicated façade as at a time when dodging Le Bas and shirking football had been cardinal requirements to make the day tolerable. Although I might not feel, with Stringham, that Peter Templer was gone for good, Peter certainly seemed now to inhabit a world that offered limited attractions. The sphere towards which Stringham seemed to be heading, little as I knew of it, was scarcely more tempting to me. Perhaps Widmerpool had been right in advocating a more serious attitude of mind towards the problem of the future. I thought over some of the remarks he had made on this subject while we had both been staying at La Grenadière.

As it turned out, Mrs. Foxe did not show the complacence Stringham had expected in agreeing, at once, that he should cease to be a member of the university. On the contrary, she wrote to say that she thought him too young to spend all his time in London; even going so far as to add that she had no desire for him to turn into “something like Bill Truscott:” of whom she had always been supposed to approve. However, this was an obstacle not entirely unforeseen; in spite of Stringham’s earlier hope that his mother might decide on the spur of the moment that a job was the best possible thing for him.

“Of course that’s Buster,” he said, when he spoke of the letter.

I was not sure that he was right. The tone of his mother’s remarks did not at all suggest arguments put forward at second-hand. They sounded much more like her own opinions. Stringham reasserted his case. The end of it was that she decided to come and talk things over.

“Really rather good of her,” said Stringham. “You can imagine how busy she must be at this time of year.”

“Do you think you will persuade her?”

“I’m going to rope in Sillery.”

“Take her to see him?”

“Have him to lunch. Will you come and play for my side?”

“I can’t play for your side, if I don’t want you to go down.”

“Well, just keep the ring then.”

This was about the stage when I began to become dimly conscious of what Short was trying to convey when he spoke of Sillery’s influence, and his intrigues; although, as far as it went, a parent’s discussion of her son’s future with a don still seemed natural enough. Sillery, I thought, was like Tiresias: for, although predominantly male, for example, in outward appearance, he seemed to have the seer’s power of assuming female character if required. With Truscott, for instance, he would behave like an affectionate aunt; while his perennial quarrel with Brightman — to take another instance of his activities — was often conducted with a mixture of bluntness and self-control that certainly could not be thought at all like a woman’s row with a man: or even with another woman; though, at the same time, it was a dispute that admittedly transcended somehow a difference of opinion between two men. Certainly Sillery had no dislike for the company of women in the way of ordinary social life, provided they made no personal demands on him. I was anxious to see how he would deal with Mrs. Foxe.

Meanwhile, I continued occasionally to see something of Quiggin, although I came no nearer to deciding which of the various views held about him were true. He was like Widmerpool, as I have said, in his complete absorption in his own activities, and also in his ambition. Unlike Widmerpool, he made no parade of his aspirations, on the contrary, keeping as secret as possible his appetite for getting on in life, so that even when I became aware of the purposeful way in which he set about obtaining what he wanted, I could never be sure where precisely his desires lay. He used to complain of the standard of tutoring, or how few useful lectures were available, and at times he liked to discuss his work in great detail. In fact I thought, at first, that he worked far harder than most of the men I knew. Later I came to doubt this, finding that Quiggin’s work was something to be discussed rather than tackled, and that what he really enjoyed was drinking cups of coffee at odd times of day. He had another characteristic with which I became in due course familiar: he was keen on meeting people he considered important, and surprisingly successful in impressing persons — as he seemed to have impressed Truscott — who might have been reasonably expected to take amiss his manner and appearance.

The subject of Quiggin came up at one of those luncheons that Short, who had a comfortable allowance, gave periodically. Mark Members, in spite of his behaviour on the earlier occasion, was again of the party (because Short regarded him as intellectually “sound”); though Brightman was the guest of honour this time. Two undergraduates, called respectively Smethwyck and Humble, were there, and perhaps others. Short was inclined to become sentimental after he had eaten and drunk a fairly large amount in the middle of the day, and he had remarked: “Quiggin must find it hard to make two ends meet up here. He told me his father used to work on the railway line outside some Midland town.”

“Not a word of truth,” said Brightman, who was the only don present. “Quiggin is in my college. I went into the whole question of his financial position when he came up. He has certainly no less money than the average — probably more with his scholarships.”

“What does his father do then, Harold?” asked Short, who was quite used to being contradicted by Brightman; and, indeed, by almost everyone else in the university.

“Deceased.”

“But what did he do?”

“A builder — keen on municipal politics. So keen, he nearly landed in jail. He got off on appeal.”

Brightman could not help smiling to himself at the ease with which he could dispose of Short.

“But he may have worked on the railway line all the same.”

“The only work Quiggin the Elder ever did on the railway line,” said Brightman, becoming more assertive at encountering argument, “was probably to travel without a ticket.”

“But that doesn’t prove that his son has got any money,” said Humble, who did not care for Brightman.

“He was left a competence,” Brightman said. “Quiggin lives with his mother, who is a town councillor. Isn’t that true, Mark?”

A more vindictive man than Short might have been suspected of having raised the subject of Quiggin primarily to punish Members for his former attack on the strawberries; but Short was far too good-natured ever to have thought of such a revenge. Besides, he would never have considered baiting anyone whom he admired on intellectual grounds. Brightman, on the other hand, had no such scruples, and he went on to say: “Come on, Mark. Let’s hear your account of Quiggin. You are neighbours, according to Sillers.”

Members must have seen that there was no way of avoiding the subject. Shaking his hair out of his eyes, he said: “There is a disused railway-siding that was turned into allotments. He probably worked there. It adjoins one of the residential suburbs.”

There was a general laugh at this answer, which was certainly a neat way of settling the questions of both Quiggin and Brightman himself, so far as Members was concerned. Smethwyck began to talk of a play he had seen in London, and conversation took a new course. However, the feelings of self-reproach that contact with Quiggin, or discussions about him, commonly aroused in me were not entirely set at rest by this description of his circumstances. Brightman’s information was notoriously unreliable: and Members’s words had clearly been actuated by personal dislike. The work on the railway line might certainly have been of a comparatively recreational nature: that had to be admitted in the light of Mark Members’s knowledge of the locality; but, even were this delineation of the background true, that would not prevent Quiggin from finding in his life some element chronically painful to him. Even though he might exaggerate to himself, and to others, his lack of means in relation to the financial circumstances of his contemporaries, this in itself pointed to a need for other — and deeply felt — discontents. It was possibly that, in the eyes of Quiggin, money represented some element in which he knew himself deficient: rather in the same way that Widmerpool, when he wanted to criticise Stringham, said that he had too much money: no doubt in truth envying the possession of assets that were, in fact, not material ones. It was some similar course of speculation that seemed to give shape to Quiggin’s character and outward behaviour.

Short’s luncheon took place the day before I was to meet Mrs. Foxe again, and I thought over the question of Quiggin on my way to Stringham’s rooms.

“This may be rather a ghastly meal,” Stringham said, while we waited for his mother, and Sillery, to arrive.

Sillery appeared first. He had cleaned himself up a little for the occasion, trimmed his moustache at the corners, and exchanged his usual blue bow for a black silk tie with white spots. Stringham offered him sherry, which was refused. Like many persons more interested in power than sensual enjoyment, Sillery touched no strong drink. Prowling about the room for a minute or two, he glanced at the invitations on the mantelpiece: a London dance or two, and some undergraduate parties. He found nothing there that appeared to interest him, because he turned, and, stepping between Stringham and myself, took each of us by an arm, resting his weight slightly.

“I hear you have been seeing something of Brother Quiggin,” he said to me.

“We met at one of Brightman’s lectures, Sillers.”

“You both go to Brightman’s lectures, do you?” said Sillery. “I hope they are being decently attended,”

“Moderate.”

“Mostly women, I fear.”

“A sprinkling of men.”

“I heard they were getting quite painfully empty. It’s a pity, because Brightman is such an able fellow. He won golden opinions as a young man,” said Sillery.

“But tell me, how do you find Brother Quiggin?”

I hardly knew what to say. However, Sillery seemed to require no answer. He said: “Brother Quiggin is an able young man, too. We must not forget that.”

Stringham did not seem much in the mood for Sillery. He moved away towards the window. A gramophone was playing in the rooms above. Outside, the weather was hot and rather stuffy.

“I hope my mother is not going to be really desperately late,” he said.

We waited. Sillery began to describe a walking tour he had once taken in Sicily with two friends, one of whom had risen to be Postmaster-General: the other, dead in his twenties, having shown promise of even higher things. He was in the middle of an anecdote about an amusing experience they had had with a German professor in a church at Syracuse, when there was a step on the stairs outside. Stringham went to the door, and out on to the landing. I heard him say: “Why, hallo, Tuffy. Only you?”

Miss Weedon’s reply was not audible within the room. She came in a moment later, looking much the same as when I had seen her in London. Stringham followed. “My mother is awfully sorry, Sillers, but she could not get away at the last moment,” he said. “Miss Weedon very sweetly motored all the way here, in order that we should not have a vacant place at the table.”

Sillery did not take this news at all well. There could be no doubt that he was deeply disappointed at Mrs. Foxe’s defection; and that he did not feel Miss Weedon to be, in any way, an adequate substitute for Stringham’s mother. We settled down to a meal that showed no outward prospect of being particularly enjoyable. Stringham himself did not appear in the least surprised at this miscarriage of plans. He was evidently pleased to see Miss Weedon, who, of the two of them, seemed the more worried that a discussion regarding Stringham’s future would have to be postponed. Sillery decided that the first step was to establish his own position in Miss Weedon’s eyes before, as he no doubt intended, exploring her own possibilities for exploitation.

“Salmon,” he remarked. “Always makes me think of Mr. Gladstone.”

“Have some, all the same,” said Stringham. “I hope it’s fresh.”

“Did you arrange all this lunch yourself?” asked Miss Weedon, before Sillery could proceed further with his story. “How wonderful of you. You know your mother was really distressed that she couldn’t come.”

“The boys were at choir-practice when I passed this way,” said Sillery, determined that he should enter the conversation on his own terms. “They were trying over that bit from The Messiah” — he hummed distantly, and beat time with his fork —” you know, those children’s voices made me mighty sad.”

“Charles used to have a nice voice, didn’t you?” said Miss Weedon: plainly more as a tribute to Stringham’s completeness of personality, rather than because the matter could be thought to be of any great musical interest.

“I really might have earned my living that way, if it hadn’t broken,” said Stringham. “I should especially have enjoyed singing in the street. Perhaps I shall come to it yet.”

“There’s been a terrible to-do about the way you earn your living,” said Miss Weedon. “Buster doesn’t at all like the idea of your living in London.”

Sillery showed interest in this remark, in spite of his evident dissatisfaction at the manner in which Miss Weedon treated him. He seemed unable to decide upon her precise status in the household: which was, indeed, one not easy to assess. It was equally hard to guess what she knew, or thought, of Sillery; whether she appreciated the extent of his experience in such situations as that which had arisen in regard to Stringham. Sitting opposite him, she seemed to have become firmer and more masculine; while Sillery himself, more than ever, took the shape of a wizard or shaman, equipped to resist either man or woman from a bisexual vantage.

This ineffective situation might have continued throughout Miss Weedon’s visit, if Moffet — about whom a word should be said — had not handed Stringham a telegram, when he brought the next course. Moffet, a tall, gloomy man, on account of his general demeanour, which was certainly oppressive enough, had in some degree contributed to Stringham’s dislike for university life. Stringham used to call Moffet “the murderer,” not on account of anything outwardly disreputable in his appearance, which might have been that of some ecclesiastical dignitary, but because of what Stringham named “the cold cruelty of Moffet’s eye.” If Moffet decided, for one reason or another, that an undergraduate on his staircase was worth cultivating, there was something sacerdotal about the precision with which he never left him free from attentions; as if the victim must be converted, come what may, to Moffet’s doctrines. Moffet had at first sight made up his mind that Stringham was one to be brought under his sway.

One of Moffet’s tenets was in connection with the manner in which Stringham arranged several ivory elephants along the top of his mantelpiece. Stringham liked the elephants to follow each other in column: Moffet preferred them to face the room in line. I had been present, on one occasion, when Moffet, having just finished “doing the room,” had disappeared from it. Stringham walked over to the fireplace, where the elephants stood with their trunks in line, and turned them sideways. As he completed this rearrangement, Moffet came in once more through the door. Stringham had the last elephant in his hand. Moffet stared across at him forbiddingly.

“I am afraid I do not arrange ornaments very well, sir,” said Moffet.

“Just a whim of mine regarding elephants.”

“I will try to remember, sir,” said Moffet. “They take a powerful lot of dusting.”

He retired again, adding: “Thank you, sir,” as he closed the door. The incident disturbed Stringham. “Now I shall have to go down,” he said.

However, Moffet was in an excellent mood at having an opportunity to wait on Sillery, of whom, for some reason, he approved more than of most dons. He brought in the telegram with a flourish. The message was from Stringham’s mother: she would be arriving, after all: Buster was driving her down. At this, Sillery cheered up at once; and Miss Weedon, too, saw hope that negotiations might now take place. Stringham himself seemed as indifferent as before.

“If Buster is coming,” he said, “he will certainly queer the pitch.”

“I am looking forward to meeting Buster,” said Sillery, smiling straight across the table to Miss Weedon. “I think I shall persuade him to our point of view.”

He put the tips of his fingers together. Miss Weedon looked a little surprised at this whole-hearted way in which Sillery offered himself as an ally. She had perhaps assumed that, as a don, he would inevitably attempt to prevent Stringham from going down. She said: “Commander Foxe’s great regret is that he never went to the university.”

I did not know whether this remark was intended to excuse Buster, or to suggest to Sillery a line of attack.

“No doubt he acquired a very useful education in a different sphere,” said Sillery. “I have made enquiries, and find that we have many friends in common. Bill Truscott, for example.”

Miss Weedon did not feel equally enthusiastic about Bill Truscott. I wondered if they had crossed swords.

“Mr. Truscott has been in the house a lot lately,” she said, guardedly.

“Bill knows the situation perfectly,” said Sillery. “It would be a great advantage to work in harness with him.” All Miss Weedon was prepared to admit was the statement that “Mr. Truscott is always very kind.” However, Sillery’s changed mood much improved the atmosphere; luncheon continuing with less sense of strain.

Mrs. Foxe and Buster arrived just as Moffet was clearing the table. They brought with them a hamper; caviare, grapes, a bottle of champagne. The effect of their entrance was immediate. Sillery and Miss Weedon at once abjured a great proportion of the hermaphroditic humours assumed by each of them for the purpose of more convenient association with the other: Miss Weedon relapsing into her normal role of attendance on Mrs. Foxe: Sillery steering himself more decidedly towards the part of eccentric professor, and away from the comparatively straightforward manner in which he had been discussing Stringham’s affairs. This was the first time I had seen Mrs. Foxe and Buster together. They made an unusual couple. This was not due to the fact that she was a few years the elder of the two, which was scarcely noticeable, because Buster, though he had lost some of his look of anxiety, was distinctly fatter, and less juvenile in appearance, than he had seemed in London a year or more before. He was still dressed with care, and appeared in a more amenable temper than at our earlier meeting.

“We brought some grub down,” he said to Stringham, putting the hamper on a chair; and, turning to me, he remarked: “I think one can always use caviare, don’t you?”

It was clear that he accepted the fact that in the presence of his wife he was a subordinate figure, wherever he might rank away from her. Mrs. Foxe’s ownership of Buster seemed complete when they were in a room together. From time to time she would glance at him as if to make sure that he were behaving himself; but her look was one of complete assurance that a word from her would be sufficient to quell even the smallest outbreak of conduct of a kind of which she might disapprove. I found out, much later, that the circumstances of their marriage had been, so far as they went, respectable enough; and that nothing could have been farther from the truth than Widmerpool’s suggestion that her divorce had been a particularly scandalous one. At that time, however, I had not heard any of the story; and I was still curious to know where she and Buster had met, and what romantic climax had been the cause of their going off together.

Sillery now showed great activity. He moved quickly forward to Mrs. Foxe, for a moment or two engaging her in conversation that took up the threads of their acquaintanceship of years before. Then he made for Buster, on whom he evidently intended to concentrate his forces, manoeuvring him to the far end of the room; and, after a short while, taking his arm. Moffet had come in to ask if more coffee was required. He was in his element in this somewhat confused scene. Mrs. Foxe and Buster, not yet having lunched, some sort of a picnic was now organised among the remnants of the meal just consumed.

Sillery must have made his point, whatever it was, with Buster almost immediately, because soon he led him back to the food, assuring us that it was extraordinary that, during his war work with the Y.M.C.A., they had never met, though how this meeting could possibly have happened he did not explain. Whatever they had found in common was satisfactory to Buster, too, since he laughed and talked with Sillery as if he had known him for years. I have sometimes wondered whether Sillery made some specific offer on that occasion: a useful business introduction, for example, might have been dangled before Buster, then, as I knew from Stringham, contemplating retirement from the Navy. On the whole it is probable that nothing more concrete took place than that the two of them were aware, as soon as they set eyes on one another, of mutual sympathy: Sillery confining himself to flattery, and perhaps allowing Buster to hear the names of some of the more impressive specimens in his collection. Whatever the reason, Stringham’s fate was settled in these first few minutes, because it was then that Buster must have decided to withdraw opposition. How serious this opposition was likely to be, if Sillery had not stepped in, is another question hard to answer. Buster might be in comparative subjection to his wife, but he was not necessarily without influence with her on that account. On the contrary, his subjection was no doubt a source of power to him in such matters. It was not surprising that he was against Stringham going down; his change of heart was much less to be expected. However, by the time Mrs. Foxe decided to leave, after scarcely any discussion over the caviare, champagne and grapes (the last of which Sillery consented to share), it was agreed that Stringham should go down at the end of the term. When he said good-bye, Sillery assured Mrs. Foxe that he was always at her service: when he took Buster’s hand he put his own left hand over their combined grip, as if to seal it: to Miss Weedon he was polite and friendly, though less demonstrative. Moffet was waiting on the stairs. Something in the dignity of his bow must have moved Buster, because a coin changed hands.

*

Although a letter from Uncle Giles was by no means unknown, he did not write often; and only when he wanted something done for him: requiring details of an address he had lost, for example, or transmitting an account of some project in which he was commercially interested at that moment and wished recommended to all persons his relations might come across. He possessed a neat, stiff, old-fashioned handwriting, not at all suggestive of vagaries of character. There was usually a card from him at Christmas, undecorated, and very small in size: sent out in plenty of time. When, towards the end of the Michaelmas term, an envelope arrived addressed in his angular hand, I supposed at first that he had now taken to dispatching these Christmas greetings more than a month in advance. “I am staying in London for some weeks,” he wrote, “and I should like to see you one evening. After all, I have only three nephews. I dine every night at the Trouville Restaurant. Just drop in. It is very simple, of course, but you get good value for your money. We must take care of the pennies, these days. Any night will do.” Sunny Farebrother, I remembered, had made the same remark about the pennies. The fact that I might not be in a position to “drop in” to a restaurant in London “any night” did not appear to have struck my uncle, never very good at grasping principles that might govern other people’s lives and movements. His letter was written from Harrods, so that there was no means of sending an answer; and I made up my mind that, even if I were to visit London — as I was doing, so it happened, the following day, to dine with Stringham — I should not spend the evening at the Trouville Restaurant. Uncle Giles did not state the reason for his wish to meet me, which may have sprung from completely disinterested affection for a member of his family not seen for some time. I suspected, perhaps unjustly, that such was not the motive; and, since at that age behaviour of older people seems, more often than not, entirely meaningless, I dismissed Uncle Giles’s letter from my mind, as I now think, rather inexcusably. I had not seen Stringham since the summer, and had heard very little from him on the subject of his job. For one reason or another arrangements to meet had fallen through, and I felt, instinctively, that he was passing into an orbit where we should from now on see less of each other. I was thinking about this subject that afternoon, feeling disinclined for work, watching the towers of the neighbouring college, with the leaden sky beyond, when there was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

It was Le Bas.

“I’ve been lunching with your Dean,” he said. “He mentioned your name. I thought I would look you up.”

For some reason I felt enormously surprised to see him standing there. He had passed so utterly from daily life. This surprise was certainly not due to Le Bas having altered in appearance. On the contrary, he looked the same in all respects: except that he seemed to have shrunk slightly in size, and to have developed a kind of deadness I had not remembered in the texture of his skin. He stood by the door, as if he had just glanced in to make sure that no misbehaviour was in progress, and would proceed immediately on his way to other rooms in the college, to see that there, too, all was well. I asked him to sit down. He came farther into the room, but appeared unwilling to seat himself; standing in one of his characteristic poses, holding up both his hands, one a little above the other, like an Egyptian god, or figure from the Bayeux tapestry.

“How are you getting on, Jenkins?” he asked, at last agreeing, though with apparent reluctance, to occupy an arm-chair. “You have a nice view from here, I see.”

He rose again, and stared out of the window for a minute or two, at the place where clouds had begun to darken the sky. The sound of undergraduate voices came up from below. Le Bas turned his gaze down on the passers-by.

“I expect you know the story of Calverley throwing pebbles at the Master of Balliol’s window,” he said. “Just to make him look out for the benefit of some visitors. Parkinson was some sort of a connection of Calverley’s, I believe. I saw Parkinson the other day. In fact I rowed in a Duffers’ Eight with him. Parkinson was in your time, wasn’t he? Or am I confusing dates?”

“Yes, he was. He only went down from here last year.”

“He missed his ‘blue,’ didn’t he?”

“I think he was only tried out a couple of times.”

“Who else is there from my house?”

“Stringham went down last term.”

“Went down, did he? Was he sent down?”

“No, he —”

“Of course I remember Stringham,” said Le Bas. “Wrote a shocking hand. Never saw such a fist. What was he sent down for?”

“He wasn’t sent down. He got a job with Donners-Brebner. I am going to see him tomorrow.”

“Who else?” insisted Le Bas, who had evidently never heard of Donners-Brebner.

“I saw Templer not long ago. He is in the City now.”

“Templer?” said Le Bas. “Oh, yes, Templer. In the City, is he? Did he go up to the university?”

“No.”

“Probably just as well,” said Le Bas. “Still it might have toned him down a bit. I suppose as it is he will spend the rest of his life wearing those startling socks. It was Templer, wasn’t it, who always wore those dreadful socks?”

“Yes — it was.”

“Still, he may grow out of it,” said Le Bas.

“Or them,” I said; and, since Le Bas did not smile, added: “I stayed in the same French family as Widmerpool, the summer after I left.”

“Ah yes, Widmerpool.”

Le Bas thought for a long time. He climbed up on to the fender, and began to lift himself by the edge of the mantelpiece. I thought for a moment that he might be going to hoist himself right on to the shelf; perhaps lie there.

“I was never quite happy about Widmerpool,” he admitted at last.

This statement did not seem to require an answer.

“As you probably know,” said Le Bas, “there were jokes about an overcoat in the early days.”

“I remember being told something about it.”

“Plenty of keenness, but somehow —”

“He used to train hard.”

“And a strong — well —” Le Bas seemed rather at a loss, ending somewhat abruptly with the words: “Certain moral qualities, admirable so far as they went, but —”

I supposed he was thinking of the Akworth affair, which must have caused him a good deal of trouble.

“He seemed to be getting on all right when I saw him in France.”

This statement seemed in the main true. “I am glad to hear it,” said Le Bas. “Very glad. I hope he will find his level in life. Which college did you say?”

“He didn’t go to the university.”

“What is he going to be?”

“A solicitor.”

“Do none of my pupils consider a degree an advantage in life? I hope you will work hard for yours.”.

Facetiously, I held up a copy of Stubbs’s Charters that happened to be lying at hand on the table. “Do you know Sillery?” I asked.

“Sillery? Sillery? Oh, yes, of course I know Sillery,” Le Bas said; but he did not rise to this bait. There was a pause.

“Well, I have enjoyed our talk,” Le Bas said. “I expect I shall see you on Old Boy Day.”

He got up from the chair, and stood for a few seconds, as if undecided whether or not to bring his visit to an end.

“Friendships have to be kept up,” he said, unexpectedly.

I suppose that his presence had recalled — though unconsciously — the day of Braddock alias Thorne; because for some reason, inexplicable to myself, I said: “Like Heraclitus.”

Le Bas looked surprised.

“You know the poem, do you?” he said. “Yes, I remember you were rather keen on English.”

Then he turned and made for the door, still apparently pondering the questions that this reference to Heraclitus had aroused in his mind. Having reached the door, he stopped. There was evidently some affirmation he found difficulty in getting out. After several false starts, he said: “You know, Jenkins, do always try to remember one thing — it takes all sorts to make a world.”

I said that I would try to remember that.

“Good,” said Le Bas. “You will find it a help.”

I watched him from the window. He walked quickly in the direction of the main entrance of the college: suddenly he turned on his heel and came back, very slowly, towards my staircase, at the foot of which he stopped for about a minute then he moved off again at a moderate pace in another quarter: finally disappearing from sight, without leaving any impression of decision as to his next port of call. The episode of Braddock alias Thorne, called up by Le Bas’s visit, took on a more grotesque aspect than ever, when thought of now. I wondered whether Le Bas had himself truly accepted his own last proposition. Nothing in his behaviour had ever suggested that his chosen principles were built up on a deep appreciation of the diversity of human character. On the contrary, he had always demanded of his pupils certain easily recognisable conventions of conduct: though, at the same time, it occurred to me that the habit of making just such analyses of motive as this was precisely what Le Bas had a moment before so delicately deprecated in myself.

There are certain people who seem inextricably linked in life; so that meeting one acquaintance in the street means that a letter, without fail, will arrive in a day or two from an associate involuntarily harnessed to him, or her, in time. Le Bas’s appearance was one of those odd preludes that take place, and give, as it were, dramatic form, to occurrences that have more than ordinary significance. It is as if the tempo altered gradually, so that too violent a change of sensation should not take place; in this case, that some of the atmosphere of school should be reconstructed, although only in a haphazard fashion, as if for an amateur performance, in order that I should not meet Stringham in his new surroundings without a reminder of the circumstances in which we had first known one another.

For some reason, during the following day in London, I found myself thinking all the time of Le Bas’s visit; although it was long before I came to look upon such transcendental manipulation of surrounding figures almost as a matter of routine. The weather was bad. When the time came, I was glad to find myself in the Donners-Brebner building, although the innate dejection of spirit of that part of London was augmented by regarding its landscape from this huge and shapeless edifice, recently built in a style as wholly without ostensible order as if it were some vast prehistoric cromlech. Stringham’s office was on one of the upper storeys, looking north over the river. It was dark now outside, and lights were reflected in the water, from the oppressive and cheerless, as well as beautiful, riverside. Stringham looked well: better than I had seen him for a long time.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“I’m a bit late.”

“We’ll have a drink.”

“Where shall we make for?”

For a brief second, for an inexpressibly curtailed efflux of time, so short that its duration could be appreciated only in recollection, being immediately engulfed at the moment of birth, I was conscious of a sensation I had never before encountered: an awareness that Stringham was perhaps a trifle embarrassed. He took a step forward, and made as if to pat my head, as one who makes much of an animal.

“There, there,” he said. “Good dog. Don’t growl. The fact is I am cutting your date. Cutting it in slow motion before your eyes.”

“Well?”

“It is an absolutely inexcusable thing to do. I’ve been asked to rather a good party at short notice — and have to dine and go to a play first. As the party can hardly fail to be rather fun, I thought you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course not.”

“An intolerable act, I admit.”

“Not if it’s a good party.”

“I thought the thing to do would be for you to come back and talk while I changed. Then I could drop you wherever you are going to dine.”

“Let’s do that.”

I could pretend to Stringham that I did not mind: within, I was exceedingly annoyed. This was quite unlike him. A rearrangement of plans would now be necessary. His car was parked outside. We drove northward.

“How are things at the old coll.?”

“Le Bas visited me yesterday.”

“Our former housemaster?”

“Braddock alias Thorne.”

“Good heavens, I had forgotten all about that.”

“I wonder if he has?”

“Did you tell him how it happened?”

“No.”

“How extraordinary for him to swim to the surface.”

“He asked about you.”

“No?”

Stringham was not interested.. Le Bas was scarcely a memory. I began to realise that considerable changes had indeed been taking place.

“What is it like in London?”

“I’m rather enjoying myself. You must come and live here soon.”

“I suppose I shall in due course.”

“Can’t you get sent down? No one could stand three years of university life.”

We arrived at the house, and, passing between the pillars of the doorway, collected drinks in the dining-room. Then we went upstairs. The place seemed less gloomy than on my earlier visit. Stringham’s bedroom was a rather comfortless apartment, looking out on to the roofs of another row of large houses. “Who are you dining with?”

“The Bridgnorths.”

“Haven’t I seen pictures of a rather captivating daughter called Lady Peggy Stepney?”

“The last photograph was taken at Newmarket. I’ve been wondering whether it wasn’t time for her to get married and settle down,” said Stringham. “I seem to have been a bachelor an awfully long time.”

“What does Lady Peggy think about it?”

“There are indications that she does not actively dislike me.”

“Why not, then?”

We talked in a desultory way, Stringham walking to and fro, wearing only a stiff shirt, and some black silk socks, while he washed his hands and brushed his hair. I did not know how serious he might be with regard to the Bridgnorths’ daughter. The idea of one of my friends getting married had scarcely occurred to me, even as a possibility. I saw now that such a thing was not absolutely out of the question. From time to time a footman appeared, offering different collars, because Stringham could find none he liked.

“I suppose this must be one of Buster’s,” he said, at last accepting a collar that satisfied him. “I shall sell the rest of mine off cheap to the clergy to wear back-to-front.” He slipped on his tail-coat, pulling at the cuffs of his shirt. “Come on,” he said; “we’ll have another drink on the way out.”

“Where is your dinner-party?”

“Grosvenor Square. Where shall I drop you?”

“Grosvenor Square will do for me.”

“But what will you do?”

“Dine with an uncle of mine.”

“Does he live there?”

“No — but he isn’t expecting me just yet.”

“He was expecting you then?”

“A standing invitation.”

“So I really haven’t left you too high and dry?”

“Not in the least.”

“You are jolly lucky to have relations you can drop in on at any time,’” said Stringham. “My own are much too occupied with their own affairs to care for that.”

“You met Uncle Giles once. He suddenly arrived one night when we were having tea. It was the day of Peter’s ‘unfortunate incident’.”

Stringham laughed. He said: “I remember about Peter, but not about your uncle.”

We reached the car again, and drove for a time in silence. “We’ll meet soon,” Stringham said. “I suppose you are going back to-night — otherwise we might have lunched tomorrow.”

“I’ll be up in a week or two.”

“We will get together then.”

We had reached Grosvenor Square, and he slowed up: “Now where?”

“I’ll climb down here.”

“I expect it will be a really frightful party, and Peggy will have decided not to turn up.” He waved, and I waved, as the car went on to the far side of the square.

The evening was decidedly cool, and rain was halfheartedly falling. I knew now that this parting was one of those final things that happen, recurrently, as time passes: until at last they may be recognised fairly easily as the close of a period. This was the last I should see of Stringham for a long time. The path had suddenly forked. With regret, I accepted the inevitability of circumstance. Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become. Lady Bridgnorth, by her invitation that night, had effortlessly snapped one of the links — for practical purposes the main one — between Stringham and myself; just as the accident in Templer’s car, in a rather different manner, had removed Templer from Stringham’s course. A new epoch was opening: in a sense this night was the final remnant of life at school.

I was glad to have remembered Uncle Giles. It was, I suppose, justification of the family as a social group that, upon such an occasion, my uncle’s company seemed to offer a restorative in the accidental nature of our relationship and the purely formal regard paid by him to the fact that I was his nephew. Finding a telephone box, I looked up the address of the Trouville Restaurant, which turned out to be in Soho. It was fairly early in the evening. Passing slowly through a network of narrow streets, and travelling some distance, I came at last to the Trouville. The outside was not inviting. The restaurant’s façade was boarded up with dull, reddish shutters. At the door hung a table d’hôte menu, slipped into a brass frame that advertised Schweppes’ mineral waters — Blanchailles — Potage Solférino — Sole Bercy — Côtelettes d’Agneau Reform — Glace Néapolitaine — Café. The advertised charge seemed very reasonable. The immense depression of this soiled, claret-coloured exterior certainly seemed to meet the case; for there is always something solemn about change, even when accepted.

Within, the room was narrow, and unnaturally long, with a table each side, one after another, stretching in perspective into shadows that hid the service lift: which was set among palms rising from ornate brass pots. The emptiness, dim light, silence — and, to some extent, the smell — created a faintly ecclesiastical atmosphere; so that the track between the tables might have been an aisle, leading, perhaps, to a hidden choir. Uncle Giles himself, sitting alone at the far end of this place, bent over a book, had the air of a sleepy worshipper, waiting for the next service to begin. He did not look specially pleased to see me, and not at all surprised. “You’re a bit late,” he said. “So I started.” It had not occurred to him that I should do otherwise than come straight up to London, so soon as informed that there was an opportunity to see him again. He put his book face-downwards on the tablecloth. I saw that it was called Some Things That Matter. We discussed the Trust until it was time to catch my train.