A Buyer's Market (26 page)
“It’s quite all right, sir, quite all right,” he said. “She’ll fire in a moment. I think I left her too long in the sun.”
For a time, while we all watched, the starter screeched again without taking effect; the sound was decreasing and this time it stopped finally. It was clear that the battery had run out.
“We’ll give you a push,” said Pardoe. “Come on, boys.”
Several of the men went over to help, and Widmerpool, m his two-seater, was trundled, like Juggernaut, round and round the open space. At first these efforts were fruitless, but suddenly the engine began to hum, this sound occurring at a moment when, facing a wall, the car was so placed to make immediate progress forward impossible. Widmerpool therefore applied the brake, “warming up” for several seconds. I could see, when once more he advanced his head through the window, that he was greatly agitated. He shouted to Sir Magnus: “I must apologise for this, sir, I really must. It is too bad.”
Sir Magnus inclined his head indulgently. He evidently retained his excellent humour. It was then, just as the Walpole-Wilson party were settled in their two cars, that the accident happened. My attention had been momentarily distracted from the scene in which Widmerpool was playing the main role by manoeuvres on the part of Sir Gavin to steer Rosie Manasch, this time successfully, into the seat beside him; with the unforeseen result that Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson, as if by irresistible instinct, immediately seated herself in the back of the same car. While these dispositions were taking place, Widmerpool, making up his mind to move, must have released the brake and pressed the accelerator too hard. Perhaps he was unaware that his gear was still in “reverse.” Whatever the reason, the Morris suddenly shot backward with terrific force for so small a body, running precipitately into one of the stone urns where it stood, crowned with geraniums, at the corner of the sunken lawn. For a moment it looked as if Widmerpool and his car would follow the flower-pot and its heavy base, as they crashed down on to the grass, striking against each other with so much force that portions of decorative moulding broke from off the urn. Either the impact, or some sudden, and quite unexpected, re-establishment of control on Widmerpool’s part, prevented his own wholesale descent on to the lower levels of the lawn. The engine of the Morris stopped again, giving as it did so a kind of wail like the departure of an unhappy spirit, and, much dented at the rear, the car rolled forward a yard or two, coming to rest at an angle, not far from the edge of the parapet.
Before this incident was at an end, the Walpole-Wilson chauffeur had already begun to move off, and, looking back, the last I saw of the actors was a glimpse of the absolutely impassive face of Sir Magnus, as he strode with easy steps once more across the gravel to where Widmerpool was climbing out of his car. The sun was still hot. Its rays caught the sweat glistening on Widmerpool’s features, and flashed on his spectacles, from which, as from a mirror, the light was reflected. There was just time to see him snatch these glasses from his nose as he groped for a handkerchief. We passed under the arch, reaching the portcullis, and crossing the causeway over the moat, before anyone spoke. Once more the car entered the lanes and byways of that romantic countryside.
“That was a near one,” said Pardoe.
“Ought we to have stopped?” asked Lady Walpole-Wilson, anxiously.
“I wonder who it was,” she continued a moment later.
“Why, didn’t you see?” said Eleanor. “It was Mr. Widmerpool. He arrived at Stourwater some time after luncheon. Is he staying there, do you think?”
This information threw her mother into one of her not uncommon states of confusion, though whether the nervous attack with which Lady Walpole-Wilson was now visited could be attributed to some version, no doubt by that time hopelessly garbled, having come to her ears regarding Barbara and the sugar incident, it was not possible to say. More probably she merely looked upon Widmerpool and his mother as creators of a social problem with which she was consciously unwilling to contend. Possibly she had hoped that, in subsequent summers, the Widmerpools would find somewhere else in England to rent a cottage; or, at least, that after a single invitation to dinner the whole matter of Widmerpool’s existence might be forgotten once and for all. Certainly she would not wish, over and above such strands as already existed, to be additionally linked to his mother. That was certain. Nor could there be any doubt that she would not greatly care for the idea of Widmerpool himself being in love with her niece. At the same time, nothing could be more positive than the supposition that Lady Walpole-Wilson would, if necessary, have shown the Widmerpools, mother and son, all the kindness and consideration that their presence in the locality—regarded, of course, in relation to his father’s former agricultural connection with her brother-in-law—might, in the circumstances, justly demand.
“Oh, I hardly think Mr. Widmerpool would be staying at Stourwater,” she said; adding almost immediately: “Though I don’t in the least know why I should declare that. Anyway … he seemed to be driving away from the castle when we last saw him.”
This last sentence was the product of instinctive kindness of heart, or fear that she might have sounded snobbish: the latter state of mind being particularly abhorrent to her at that moment because the attitude, if existent, might seem applied to an establishment which she could not perhaps wholly respect. She looked so despairing at the idea of Widmerpool possessing, as it were, an operational base in extension to the cottage from which he, and his mother, could already potentially molest Hinton, that I felt it my duty to explain with as little delay as possible that Widmerpool had recently taken a job at Donners-Brebner, and had merely come over that afternoon to see Sir Magnus on a matter of business. This statement seemed, for some reason, to put her mind at ease, at least for the moment.
“I was really wondering whether we should ask Mr. Widmerpool and his mother over to tea,” she said, as if the question of how to deal with the Widmerpools had now crystallised in her mind. “You know Aunt Janet likes an occasional talk with Mrs. Widmerpool—even though they don’t always see eye to eye.”
What followed gave me the impression that Lady Walpole-Wilson’s sudden relief may have been to some extent attributable to the fact that she had all at once arrived at a method by which the Widmerpools might be evaded, or a meeting with them at least postponed. If this was her plan—and, although in many ways one of the least disingenuous of women, I think she must quickly have devised a scheme on that occasion—the design worked effectively, because, at this suggestion of her mother’s, Eleanor at once clenched her teeth in a manner that always indicated disapproval.
“Oh, don’t let’s have them over when Aunt Janet is here,” she said. “You know I don’t really care for Mr. Widmerpool very much—and Aunt Janet has plenty of opportunity to have her gossips with his mother when they are both in London.”
Lady Walpole-Wilson made a little gesture indicating “So be it,” and there the matter seemed to rest, where, I suppose, she had intended it to rest. Disturbed by mixed feelings set in motion by benevolence and conscience, she had been no doubt momentarily thrown off her guard. Comparative equilibrium was now restored. We drove on; and, by that evening, Widmerpool was forgotten by the rest of the party at Hinton Hoo. However, although nothing further was said about Widmerpool, other aspects of the visit to Stourwater were widely discussed. The day had left Sir Gavin a prey to deep depression. The meeting with Prince Theodoric had provided, naturally enough, a reminder of former grandeurs, and the congenial nature of their reunion, by agreeable memories aroused, had no doubt at the same time equally called to mind the existence of old, unhealed wounds.
“Theodoric is a man of the middle of the road,” he said. “That, in itself, is sympathetic to me. In my own case, such an attitude has, of course, been to a large extent a professional necessity. All the same it is in men like Karolyi and Sforza that I sense a kind of fundamental reciprocity of thought.”
“He seems a simple young man,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson. “I find no particular fault in him. No doubt he will have a difficult time with that brother of his.”
“Really, the Prince could not have been more friendly,” said Lady Walpole-Wilson, “and Sir Magnus, too. He was so kind. I can’t think why he has never married. So nice to see the Huntercombes. Pretty little person, Mrs. Wentworth.”
“So your friend Charles Stringham is engaged again,” said Rosie Manasch, rather maliciously. “I wonder why it hasn’t been in the papers. Do you think his mother is holding up the announcement for some reason? Or the Bridgnorths? They sound rather a stuffy pair, so it may be them.”
“How long ought one to wait until one puts an engagement in print?” asked Pardoe.
“Are you secretly engaged, Johnny?” said Rosie. “I’m sure he is, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” said Pardoe. “To half a dozen girls, at least. It’s just a question of deciding which is to be the lucky one. Don’t want to make a mistake.”
“I’ve arranged to see the hound puppies on Tuesday,” said Eleanor. “What a pity you will all be gone by then.”
However, she spoke as if she could survive the disbandment of our party. I pondered some of the events of the day, especially the situations to which, by some inexorable fate, Widmerpool’s character seemed to commit him. This last misfortune had been, if anything, worse than the matter of Barbara and the sugar. And yet, like the phoenix, he rose habitually, so I concluded, recalling his other worries, from the ashes of his own humiliation. I could not help admiring the calm manner in which Sir Magnus had accepted damage of the most irritating kind to his property: violation which, to rich or poor, must always represent, to a greater or lesser degree, assault upon themselves and their feelings. From this incident, I began to understand at least one small aspect of Sir Magnus’s prescriptive right to have become in life what Uncle Giles would have called “a person of influence.” The point about Jean that had impressed me most, I thought, was that she was obviously more intelligent than I had previously supposed. In fact she was almost to be regarded as an entirely new person. If the chance arose again, it was in that capacity that she must be approached.
Sir Gavin straightened the photograph of Prince Theodoric’s father, wearing hussar uniform, that stood on the piano in a plain silver frame, surmounted by a royal crown.
“His helmet now shall make a hive for bees …” he remarked, as he sank heavily into an arm-chair.
4
A SENSE OF MATURITY, or at least of endured experience, is conveyed, for some reason, in the smell of autumn; so it seemed to me, passing one day, by chance, through Kensington Gardens. The eighteen months or less since that Sunday afternoon on the steps of the Albert Memorial, with the echoing of Eleanor’s whistle, and Barbara’s fleeting grasp of my arm, had become already measureless as an eternity. Now, like scraps of gilt peeled untidily from the mosaic surface of the neo-Gothic canopy, the leaves, stained dull gold, were blowing about in the wind, while, squatting motionless beside the elephant, the Arab still kept watch on summer’s mirage, as, once more, the green foliage faded gradually away before his displeased gaze. Those grave features implied that for him, too, that year, for all its monotony, had also called attention, in different aspects, to the processes of life and death that are always on the move. For my own part, I felt myself peculiarly conscious of these unalterable activities. For example, Stringham, as he had himself foreshadowed, was married to Peggy Stepney in the second week of October; the same day, as it happened, that saw the last of Mr. Deacon.
“Don’t miss Buster’s present,” Stringham just had time to remark, as the conveyor-belt of wedding guests evolved sluggishly across the carpet of the Bridgnorths’ drawing room in Cavendish Square.
There was opportunity to do no more than take the hand, for a moment, of bride and bridegroom; but Buster’s present could hardly have remained invisible: a grand-father clock, gutted, and fitted up with shelves to form a “cocktail cabinet,” fully equipped with glasses, two shakers, and space for bottles. A good deal of money had evidently been spent on this ingenious contrivance. There was even a secret drawer. I could not make up my mind whether the joke was not, in reality, against Stringham. The donor himself, perhaps physically incapacitated by anguish of jealousy, had been unable to attend the church; and, since at least one gossip column had referred to “popular Commander Foxe’s temporary retirement to a nursing home,” there seemed no reason to disbelieve in the actuality of Buster’s seizure.
Stringham’s mother, no less beautiful, so it seemed to me, than when, as a schoolboy, I had first set eyes on her—having at last made up her mind, as her son had put it, “whether to laugh or cry”—had wept throughout the whole of the service into the corner of a small, flame-coloured handkerchief. By the time of the reception, however, she had made a complete recovery. His sister, Flavia, I saw for the first time. She had married as her second husband an American called Wisebite, and her daughter, Pamela Flitton, a child of six or seven, by the earlier marriage, was one of the bridesmaids. Well dressed, and good looking, Mrs. Wisebite’s ties with Stringham were not known to me. She was a few years older than her brother, who rarely mentioned her. Miss Weedon, rather pale in the face, and more beaky than I remembered, sat in one of the back pews. I recalled the hungry looks she used to dart at Stringham on occasions when I had seen them together years before.
Neither of Peggy Stepney’s parents looked specially cheerful, and rumours were current to the effect that objections had been raised to the marriage by both families. It appeared to have been Stringham himself who had insisted upon its taking place. Such opposition as may have existed had been, no doubt, finally overcome by conviction on the Bridgnorths’ part that it was high time for their elder daughter to get married, since she could not subsist for ever on the strength of photographs, however charming, in the illustrated papers; and they could well have decided, in the circumstances, that she might easily pick on a husband less presentable than Stringham. Lord Bridgnorth, a stout, red-faced man, wearing a light grey stock and rather tight morning clothes, was notable for having owned a horse that won the Derby at a hundred to seven. His wife—daughter of a Scotch duke, to one of the remote branches of whose house Sir Gavin Walpole-Wilson’s mother had belonged—was a powerful figure in the hospital world, where she operated, so I had been informed, in bitter competition with organisations supported by Mrs. Foxe: a rivalry which their new relationship was hardly likely to decrease. The Walpole-Wilsons themselves were not present, but Lady Huntercombe, arrayed more than ever like Mrs. Siddons, was sitting with her daughters on the bride’s side of the church, and later disparaged the music.
Weddings are notoriously depressing affairs. It looked as if this one, especially, had been preceded by more than common display of grievance on the part of persons regarding themselves as, in one way or another, fairly closely concerned, and therefore possessing the right to raise difficulties and proffer advice. Only Lady Anne Stepney appeared to be, for once, enjoying herself unreservedly. She was her sister’s chief bridesmaid, and, as a kind of public assertion of rebellion against convention of all kind, rather in Mr. Deacon’s manner, she was wearing her wreath back to front; a disorder of head-dress that gravely prejudiced the general appearance of the cortege as it passed up the aisle. Little Pamela Flitton, who was holding the bride’s train, felt sick at this same moment, and rejoined her nurse at the back of the church.
I returned to my rooms that evening in rather low spirits; and, just as I was retiring to bed, Barnby rang up with the news—quite unexpected, though I had heard of his indisposition—that Mr. Deacon had died as the result of an accident. Barnby’s account of how this had come about attested the curious fitness that sometimes attends the manner in which people finally leave this world; for, although Mr. Deacon’s end was not exactly dramatic within the ordinary meaning of the term, its circumstances, as he himself would have wished, could not possibly be regarded as commonplace. In many ways the embodiment of bourgeois thought, he could have claimed with some justice that his long struggle against the shackles of convention, sometimes inwardly dear to him, had, in the last resort, come to his aid in releasing him from what he would have considered the shame of a bourgeois death.
Although the demise was not a violent one in the most usual sense of the word, it unquestionably partook at the same time of that spirit of carelessness and informality always so vigorously advocated by Mr. Deacon as a precept for pursuing what Sillery liked to call “The Good Life.” Sillery’s ideas upon that subject were, of course, rather different, on the whole, from Mr. Deacon’s, in spite of the fact that both of them, even according to their own lights, were adventurers. But, although each looked upon himself as a figure almost Promethean in spirit of independence—godlike, and following ideals of his own, far from the well-worn tracks of fellow men—their chosen roads were also acknowledged by each to be set far apart.
Mr. Deacon and Sillery must, in fact, have been just about the same age. Possibly they had known each other in their troubled youth (for even Sillery had had to carve out a career for himself in his early years), and some intersection of those unrestricted paths to which each adhered no doubt explained at least a proportion of Sillery’s disapproval of Mr. Deacon’s habits. Any such strictures on Sillery’s part were at least equally attributable to prudence: that sense of self-preservation, and desire to “keep on the safe side,” of which Sillery, among the many other qualities to which he could lay claim, possessed more than a fair share.
When, in an effort to complete the picture, I had once asked Mr. Deacon whether, in the course of his life, he had ever run across Sillery, he had replied in his deep voice, accompanied by that sardonic smile: “My father, a man of modest means, did not send me to the university, I sometimes think—with due respect, my dear Nicholas, to your own
Alma Mater
—that he was right.”
In that sentence he avoided a direct answer, while framing a form of words not specifically denying possibility of the existence of an ancient antagonism; his careful choice of phrase at the same time excusing him from commenting in any manner whatsoever on the person concerned. It was as if he insisted only upon Sillery’s status as an essentially academical celebrity: a figure not properly to be discussed by one who had never been—as Mr. Deacon was accustomed to put it in the colloquialism of his own generation—”a varsity man.” There was also more than a hint of regret implicit in the deliberately autobiographical nature of this admission, revealing an element to be taken into account in any assessment of Mr. Deacon’s own outlook.
At the time of his death, few, if any, of Mr. Deacon’s friends knew the jealously guarded secret of his age more exactly than within a year or two; in spite of the fatal accident having taken place on his birthday—or, to be pedantic about chronology, in the small hours of the day following his birthday party. I was myself not present at the latter stages of this celebration, begun at about nine o’clock on the evening before, having preferred, as night was already well advanced, to make for home at a moment when Mr. Deacon, with about half a dozen remaining guests, had decided to move on to a night-club. Mr. Deacon had taken this desertion—my own and that of several other friends, equally weak in spirit—in bad part, quoting: “Blow, blow, thou winter wind …” rather as if enjoyment of his hospitality had put everyone on his honour to accept subjection to the host’s will for at least a period of twelve hours on end. However, the dissolution of the party was clearly inevitable. The club that was their goal, newly opened, was expected by those conversant with such matters to survive no more than a week or two, before an impending police raid: a punctual visit being, therefore, regarded as a matter of comparative urgency for any amateur of “night life.” In that shady place, soon after his arrival there, Mr. Deacon fell down the stairs.
Even in this undignified mishap there had been, as ever, that touch of martyrdom inseparable from the conduct of his life, since he had been on his way, so it was learnt afterwards, to lodge a complaint with the management regarding the club’s existing sanitary arrangements: universally agreed to be deplorable enough. It was true that he might have taken a little more to drink than was usual for someone who, after the first glass or two, was relatively abstemious in his habit. His behaviour at Mrs. Andriadis’s, occasioned, of course, far more by outraged principles than unaccustomed champagne, had been, so I discovered from Barnby, quite exceptional in its unbridled nature, and had proved, indeed, a source of great worry to Mr. Deacon in the weeks that followed.
As a matter of fact, I had never learnt how the question of his exit from the house in Hill Street had been finally settled. Whether Mr. Deacon had attempted to justify himself with Mrs. Andriadis, or whether she, on her part, compelled him—with, or without, the assistance of men-servants, Max Pilgrim, or the Negro—to clear up the litter of papers in the hall, the future never revealed. Mr. Deacon himself, on subsequent occasions, chose to indicate only in the most general terms that he had found Mrs. Andriadis’s party unenjoyable. When her name had once cropped up in conversation, he echoed a sentiment often expressed by Uncle Giles, in remarking: “People’s manners have changed a lot since the war—not always for the better.” He did not disclose, even to Barnby, who acted in some respects almost as his conscience, the exact reason for his quarrel with the singer, apart from the fact that he had taken exception to specific phrases in the song, so that the nature of his difference with Pilgrim on some earlier occasion remained a matter for speculation.
However, if undeniable that at Hill Street Mr. Deacon had taken perhaps a glass or two more of champagne than was wise, the luxurious style of the surroundings had no doubt also played their part in stimulating that quixotic desire, never far below the surface in all his conduct, to champion his ideals, wherever he found himself, however unsuitable the occasion. At the night-club he was, of course, in more familiar environment, and it was agreed by everyone present that the fall had been in no way attributable to anything more than a rickety staircase and his own habitual impetuosity. The truth was that, as a man no longer young, he would have been wiser in this, and no doubt in other matters too, to have shown less frenzied haste in attempting to bring about the righting of so many of life’s glaring wrongs.
At such an hour, in such a place, nothing much was thought of the fall at the time, neither by Mr. Deacon nor the rest of his party. He had complained, so it was said, only of a bruise on his thigh and a “shaking up” inside. Indeed, he had insisted on prolonging the festivities, if they could be so called, until four o’clock in the morning: an hour when Barnby, woken at last after repeated knocking, had been roused to admit him, with Gypsy, once more to the house, because the latch-key had by that time been lost or mislaid. Mr. Deacon had gone into hospital a day or two later. He must have sustained some internal injury, for he died within the week.
We had met fairly often in the course of renewed acquaintance, for I had taken to dropping in on Barnby once or twice a week, and we would sometimes descend to the shop, or Mr. Deacon’s sitting-room, for a talk, or go across with him to the pub for a drink. Now he was no more. Transition between the states of life and death had been effected with such formidable rapidity that his anniversary seemed scarcely completed before he had been thus silently called away; and, as Barnby remarked some time later, it was “hard to think of Edgar without being overwhelmed with moralisings of a somewhat banal kind.” I certainly felt sad that I should not see Mr. Deacon again. The milestones provided by him had now come suddenly to an end. The road stretched forward still.
“Edgar’s sister is picking up the pieces,” Barnby said. “She is a clergyman’s wife, living in Norfolk, and has already had a shattering row with Jones.”
He had made this remark when informing me by telephone of arrangements made for the funeral, which was to take place on a Saturday: the day, as it happened, upon which I had agreed to have supper with Widmerpool and his mother at their flat. This invitation, arriving in the form of a note from Mrs. Widmerpool, had added that she was looking forward to meeting “so old a friend” of her son’s. I was not sure that this was exactly the light in which I wished, or, indeed, had any right, to appear; although I had to admit to myself that I was curious to learn from Widmerpool’s lips, as I had not seen him since Stourwater, an account, told from his own point of view, of the course events had taken in connection with himself and Gypsy Jones. I had already received one summary from Barnby on my first visit to Mr. Deacon’s shop after return from the Walpole-Wilsons’. He had spoken of the subject at once, so that no question of betraying Widmerpool’s confidence arose.
