A Dance To The Music Of Time Part 2

Lovell spoke the words with the mannerism he judged appropriate to such an impersonation.

'He'll grow out of it,' said Mrs. Conyers, surprising me with this repeated display of toleration. 'Lots of nice young men go through a stage of being rather silly.'

'Let's hope so,' said Alfred Tolland, with a sigh.

He did not sound very confident.

'At any rate, George is all right,' he added a moment later.

I had the impression he was playing his last card, but that this card was a trump.

'What is George Tolland doing now?' I asked. 'He was the one of the family who was my contemporary, though I never really knew him.'

'In the Coldstream for some years,' said Alfred Tolland. 'Then he thought he ought to try and make some money, so he went into the City. He has done fairly well, so they say. Never know what people mean by that-but they say pretty well.'

'Oh, yes,' said Molly Jeavons. 'I am sure that George has done well. But what a correct young man-what a correct young man! I don't think I ever met a young man who was so correct. I can't see how we are ever going to get him married, he is so correct-and even if we found a correct wife for him, I am sure they would both be much too correct to have any children. And even if they did, what frightfully correct children they would have to be.'

'You can't have it both ways, Molly,' grumbled Tolland. 'You blame some of them for misbehaving themselves. Perhaps you are right. But then you don't approve of George because he is what you call "correct". Can't understand it. There is no pleasing you. It isn't reasonable.'

'Well, now I'll tell you about the rest of them,' said Molly Jeavons, turning to me. 'Of course I really adore them all, and just say these things to make Alfred cross. There is Susan, who is showing every sign of getting engaged to a nice young man, then there is Blanche-'

'I've seen Blanche, though I don't know her.'

'Blanche is dotty. You must know that much, if you've seen her. But she's not a bad old thing.'

'Of course not.'

Alfred Tolland showed no disposition to deny the 'dottiness' of his niece, Blanche.

'Robert is a bit of a mystery. He is in some business, but I don't know whether he will stay there. Isobel-well, she is a bit different too. I'm not sure she isn't going to get engaged soon herself. Then there is Priscilla, who is on the point of coming out, and was to have been here tonight, but she doesn't seem to have turned up yet.'

I made an effort to take in this bird's-eye view of the Tollands, who now seemed to surround me on all sides after this vivid exposition of their several characters. Instinctively, I felt the greatest interest in Isobel, who was 'different'; and also an odd feeling of regret that she might be about to become engaged in the near future. While I was brooding on this, Jeavons joined us. He stood there, scanning everyone's face closely, as if hoping for some explanation of the matter in hand; perhaps even of life itself, so intense was his concentration: some reasonable interpretation couched in terms simple enough for a plain man to understand without undue effort. He also gave the impression of an old dog waiting to have a ball thrown to retrieve, more because that was the custom in the past than because sport or exercise was urgently required. However, no one enlightened him as to the subject under discussion, so he merely filled up my gla.s.s, and then his own. His wife and Alfred Tolland had now embarked on some detailed aspect of Tolland life, too esoteric for an outsider to follow.

'In the film business like Chips?' Jeavons asked, in a low husky voice, as if he had a cold coming on, or had drunk too much whisky the night before.

'Yes.'

'Ever met any of the stars?'

'Not so you'd notice. I'm on the scenario side. The studio only makes English pictures for the quota. They wouldn't be likely to employ anyone very grand in the way of an actor or actress.'

Jeavons seemed disappointed at this answer.

'Still,' he urged, 'you must see some beauties sometimes, don't you?'

'I've sat next to Adolph Menjou,' said his wife, suddenly abandoning the subject of the Tollands, and breaking in with her accustomed violence, though not, I think, with any idea of preventing him from pursuing the question of film actresses and their looks. 'He had such nice manners. Of course Garbo is the one I should really like to meet. I suppose everyone would. Wouldn't you like to meet Garbo, Alfred?'

'Never heard of him,' said Tolland.

Inevitably there was some laughter at this.

'It's a she,' said Molly Jeavons. 'It's a she, Alfred.'

'An actress, I suppose,' said Tolland, 'or you wouldn't be using that tone of voice. I don't think I particularly want to meet Miss Garbo-or perhaps it is Mrs. Garbo.'

There was more laughter at that. I was not sure-I am not sure to this day-whether he was feigning ignorance of the famous film star, whose name at that moment, the zenith of her fame, was a synonym for mysterious, elusive, feminine beauty; or whether he had, in truth, never heard of her.

'I once met Mrs. Patrick Campbell when I was a young man,' he said, speaking as if the statement was an afterthought. 'Heard her read aloud High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire. Wonderful experience. Felt different all the evening. Couldn't sleep after it. Lay awake-well-till the morning, nearly.'

Possibly Molly Jeavons felt that for a brief second the tables had been turned on her, because she now returned to the charge in the game of baiting him about his family, probably feeling in that activity on safer ground.

'Tell us more about the stained-gla.s.s window, Alfred,' she said.

This request galvanised him once again to the point of anger. She seemed to have touched some specially sensitive nerve.

'I've told you already, Molly,' he said, 'the window has never been put up as it should have been. Erridge isn't interested.'

'Surely somebody in the family can tell him to do it,' she said. 'Why can't you tell him to get on with the job yourself? He must do it, that's all.'

She spoke as if her own decision made the matter final. Alfred Tolland shook his head gloomily.

'As well ask him to lead the gla.s.s himself,' he said. 'Better, in fact. He might have a try at that. Dignity of labour or something. But as for taking an interest in his own grandfather's memorial -'

Tolland shook his head, finding metaphor, as applied to Erridge, impotent.

'Can't George take it on?' insisted Molly Jeavons. 'You think so highly of George.'

Tolland shook his head again.

'Difficult for George,' he said. 'Delicate, with Erridge the eldest son. George doesn't want to be snubbed.'

'Oh, goodness,' said Molly Jeavons, throwing up her hands, 'you Tollands drive me mad.'

Some new guests came into the room at that moment, so that her own plan for solving the problem of the stained-gla.s.s window was never revealed. In the reshuffle of places, I found myself tte--tte with Mrs. Conyers. After a few preliminary enquiries about my parents, she explained that the General was indisposed, though not seriously, having fallen headlong from the stable loft where the poodles' food was stored. He must at that time have been a few years short of eighty.

'But I did not remember you knew Lady Molly,' said Mrs. Conyers in a low voice.

'I did not, until tonight.'

'Rather a happy-go-lucky household. That very extraordinary butler. One does not know what is going to be said next.'

'So I should think.'

'Too much so for me. I am old-fashioned, I'm afraid. I do not at all mind admitting it.'

I was reminded of Hugo Tolland, said to like being 'dated', but thought it wiser not to remind Mrs. Conyers of the parallel. I wondered why she had agreed to dine with the Jeavonses if she felt so inimical to them.

'But you yourself must have known Lady Molly for a long time?'

'Of course we have known her for years and years. But never well. When she was Lady Sleaford my youngest sister, Mildred, knew her, and we used to meet sometimes. I have hardly seen her since her second marriage. We know the present Sleafords, but I don't think Lady Molly ever sees anything of them. That is to be expected, perhaps.'

'You dined here?'

'It was really on account of my sister. I can't remember whether you have ever met Mildred.'

'Only when I was a child. When you showed me the sword the sultan gave the General.'

Mrs. Conyers smiled.

'That was a long time ago,' she said. 'Then you really do not know her.'

Some of the subsequent history of Mildred Blaides was, in fact, familiar to me from occasional talk on the part of my parents. Considered rather 'fast' in her early days-as might be expected from my memory of her-she had married a Flying Corps officer called M'Cracken, who had been killed not long after the wedding in a raid over Germany. Then there had been a period of widowhood, when her behaviour had been thought 'flighty'. From the manner in which this interlude in her career used to be discussed, I imagine that my parents' generation supposed her to be about to go to the bad in a spectacular manner. However, this very generally prophesied debcle never took place. Mildred Blaides married again: the second time to an Australian business-man, a Mr. Hayc.o.c.k, retired, fairly rich, who owned a villa in the South of France and spent a good deal of his time travelling round the world. Mr. Hayc.o.c.k, who was said to possess sterling virtues in addition to his comfortable income, was also agreed to be 'rather rough'. The marriage, so far as I knew, had been quite a success. There were children, but I did not know how many.

'As a matter of fact, my sister Mildred is a very old friend of our hostess,' said Mrs. Conyers, as if the matter was weighing on her mind. 'As I say, she knows Lady Molly far better than I do. Mildred nursed at Dogdene during the war.'

'I remember her in nurse's uniform.'

'She is coming here tonight. She was to have dined, but at the last moment she was unable to be at dinner. She is-more or less engaged to a friend of Lady Molly's. As I expect you know, Mildred's husband died about a year ago. Unfortunately a business engagement prevented her-I suppose I should say-fiance from dining. He is a very busy man. He just could not get away tonight in Ume. Then Mildred herself is always changing her plans. Goodness knows why she herself could not come here without him. However, she couldn't, so there it was. They are both looking in later.'

There could be no doubt now that the matter which worried, or at least unusually preoccupied, Mrs. Conyers was connected with her sister's arrival. I could not at first decide exactly what had upset her.

'This is not the first time you have met him-the fiance?'

'As a matter of fact, I haven't seen him yet,' she said, almost apologetically, as if that was the least I could expect of her. 'You see, it only happened yesterday. That was why Lady Molly arranged the dinner. She didn't seem to mind their not turning up in the least. Of course, she is much more used to people changing their arrangements than I am.'

It seemed probable that she was merely suffering some anxiety regarding the potentialities of the man who was to be her sister's third husband. I knew enough about the reputation of Mildred Blaides to realise that anxiety was reasonable enough.

'He is a good deal younger than Mildred,' she said.

After announcing this fact, Mrs. Conyers decided to abandon the subject, perhaps fearing that in her own overwrought state she might say too much. She gave a sigh.

'If I must talk French,' she went on, with rather forced gaiety, 'I do so much prefer not to have to talk the language to a Frenchman. They are so terribly severe. I always tell them that they will never admit that any other Frenchman speaks correct French, so how can they possibly expect me to do so. That young man over there actually complimented me on my French accent.'

'Who is he?'

'From one of the Balkan Legations. I think his father was Minister over here, and used to stop at Dogdene. He was invited about rather more than you might expect because he was an unusually good shot. In the end the poor fellow was shot himself by an anarchist in his own country. The son had news of Prince Theodoric. In fact, I think he has just ceased to be a member of the Prince's personal household. As you probably know, Theodoric was rather a special friend of the divorced wife of Lady Molly's brother, Lord Ardgla.s.s, who died some years ago. Our hostess always likes to hear about him on that account. Between you and me, I am afraid she is a tiny bit of a gossip, but don't say I said so.'

Mrs. Conyers smiled a little slyly.

'Who are the two girls who have just come in and are talking to Chips Lovell?'

'He is the young man you arrived with, isn't he? The nearest is one of the Tolland girls, Priscilla, I think. She was going to see a film with a former school friend of hers whose name I was not told.'

Priscilla Tolland looked more than seventeen: even so, she had not entirely lost a long-legged, childish awkwardness in the manner in which she stood with her legs crossed. I could see she bore a strong likeness to the 'dotty' Blanche, though certainly free herself from any such disability. The girl with her, prototype of all school friends, was small and dark with horn-rimmed spectacles and an air of bossing everyone about. I thought I would have a word with them in a minute or two; when Mrs. Conyers had finished speaking of the misty past, into which she was now making a deep excursion. However, opportunity to approach the girls never came, because a second later, just as Mrs. Conyers had invited me to tea with herself and the General the following Sunday, two more persons, a man and woman, entered the room.

'Ah, there is Mildred at last,' said Mrs. Conyers, fumbling with her lorgnette, her thin hands, almost pale mauve in colour, shaking with excitement and anxiety.

I myself was curious to see what Mildred Blaides-or rather Mildred Hayc.o.c.k-might look like after all these years, half expecting her to be wearing her V.A.D. outfit and smoking a cigarette. But when my eyes fell on the two of them, it was the man, not the woman, who held my attention. Life is full of internal dramas, instantaneous and sensational, played to an audience of one. This was just such a performance. The fiance was Widmerpool. Scarlet in the face, grinning agitatedly through the thick lenses of his spectacles, he advanced into the room, his hand on Mrs. Hayc.o.c.k's arm. He was wearing a new dark suit. Like a huge fish swimming into a hitherto unexplored, unexpectedly exciting aquarium, he sailed resolutely forward: yet not a real fish, a fish made of rubber or some artificial substance. There was something a little frightening about him. That could not be denied. Molly Jeavons, this time supported by her husband, closed in on these new arrivals immediately.

'Well, he is no beauty,' said Mrs. Conyers.

She spoke with such deep relief at her discovery of the unpleasingness of Widmerpool's features that she must have feared the worst of her sister's choice on account of the reported difference of age. Probably she had pictured some golden-haired gigolo of altogether unacceptable personal appearance. The truth was a great consolation to her. Certainly, to look at them, they seemed on the score of age to be a couple very reasonably to be a.s.sociated together. Mrs. Hayc.o.c.k was in the neighbourhood of forty, and looked no younger, but Widmerpool, although only a year or so over thirty, had always appeared comfortably middle-aged even as a boy.

'I know him.'

'Who is he?'

'He is called Kenneth Widmerpool. I was at school with him as a matter of fact. He is in the City.'

'I know his name of course. And that he is in the City. But what is he like?'

Mrs. Conyers did not attempt to conceal her own impatience. The reason of her anxiety was now made plain. She had no confidence in her sister's choice of husband. She wanted to know the worst as soon as possible. Her first, and most serious, fears were pa.s.sed; she wished to move on to a later stage of enquiry. Widmerpool, although giving her reason to be thankful that the outlook was not more threatening, had evidently made no very captivating impression.

'Is he nice?'

'I've known him a long time '

By then we were both involved in general introductions taking place round the room, so that I was not forced to answer the question. Afterwards, when I got home, I pondered what I should most properly have said in reply. The fact was that Widmerpool could hardly be described as 'nice'. Energetic: able: successful: all kinds of things that had never been expected of him in the past; but 'nice' he had never been, and showed little sign of becoming. Yet, for some reason, I was quite glad to see him again. His reappearance, especially in that place, helped to prove somehow rather consolingly, that life continued its mysterious, patterned way. Widmerpool was a recurring milestone on the road; perhaps it would be more apt to say that his course, as one jogged round the track, was run from time to time, however different the pace, in common with my own. As an aspect of my past he was an element to be treated with interest, if not affection, like some unattractive building or natural feature of the landscape which brought back the irrational nostalgia of childhood. A minute later I found myself talking to him.

'No, I haven't seen you for a long time,' he said, breathing heavily as usual, 'I've been trying to get hold of you, as a matter of fact, to tell you I was getting married.'

'Many congratulations.'

'Time to settle down,' he said.

This remark was fatuous, since he had never been anything but 'settled down', at least in my eyes. I could not imagine why he should specially wish to tell me about his marriage, although there could be no doubt from his manner that he was in a great state of excitement at the thought of being engaged. His nose and lips, beneath the huge headlamps of his now rimless spectacles, were twitching slightly. Lunging out towards Mrs. Hayc.o.c.k, who stood not far from him, he seized her arm and drew her in our direction.

'This is Nicholas Jenkins, my dear. An old friend of mine. He was somewhat my junior at school.'

Mrs. Hayc.o.c.k, who had been talking to her sister, now turned and faced me, so that for the first time since she had entered the room I had an opportunity of observing closely the woman he hoped to make his wife. I could at once appreciate the strong impression she might have made on him the moment she showed herself prepared to accept him as an admirer. Tall, elegant, bra.s.sy, she was markedly of the same generation as Molly Jeavons, without personally at all resembling her. Mrs. Hayc.o.c.k's moral separateness from Widmerpool, immediately noticeable, was not on account of any difference of age, as such, for-as I have said-Widmerpool had never looked young. It was a separateness imposed upon her by the war. Like Jeavons, that was the epoch to which she belonged by some natural right. Life on the Riviera had no doubt left its mark too: a society in which Widmerpool was unlikely hitherto to have partic.i.p.ated. She retained some of her sunburn from the previous summer, and, although dressed quite normally-indeed, rather well-her clothes seemed in some indefinable manner more adapted to a plage or casino than the Jeavons drawing-room.

I had always felt an interest in what might be called the theoretical side of Widmerpool's life: the reaction of his own emotions to the severe rule of ambition that he had from the beginning imposed upon himself: the determination that existence must be governed by the will. However, the interest one takes in the lives of other people is, at best, feeble enough, so that, knowing little of his affairs in recent years, I had in truth largely forgotten about him. Now, for the second time that evening, I recalled the night when that noisy little girl, Barbara Goring, had poured sugar over his head at the Huntercombes' dance. He had been in love with her; and I, too, for that matter, or had thought so at the time. Then there had been his brief, painful a.s.sociation with Gipsy Jones, the grubby Left Wing nymph, whose 'operation' he had defrayed unrewarded. After the Gipsy Jones business, he had told me he would never again have anything to do with a woman who 'took his mind off his work.' I wondered whether Mrs. Hayc.o.c.k would satisfy that condition: whether he had proposed to her under stress of violent emotion, or had decided such a marriage would help his career. Perhaps there was an element of both motives; in any case, to attempt to disengage motives in marriage is a fruitless task. Mrs. Hayc.o.c.k took my hand, smiling absently, and gave it a good squeeze; the clutch of a woman pretty familiar with men and their ways.

'One always has to meet such crowds of people when one gets married,' she said, 'It is really too, too exhausting. Did you say we had met before? Was it at Cannes? I seem to know your face.'

She spoke breathlessly, almost asthmatically, in which she resembled Widmerpool, but using that faint hint of c.o.c.kney, an accent in part bequeathed by the overtones of the Prince of Wales to the world to which she belonged. I tried, quite unsuccessfully and perhaps not very tactfully, to explain the circ.u.mstances of our infinitely distant former meeting. It was plainly years since she had listened to any remarks addressed to her, either serious or trivial, so that perhaps deservedly-for the exposition was a formidable rigmarole upon which to embark at that moment-she swiftly disengaged herself from its demands.

'I'm absolutely longing for a drink, Molly,' she said. 'Oh, thank you so much, Mr. Jeavons, what an angel you are. I have been having the most awful time tonight. You know I abominate making plans.. Never make them, as a matter of fact. I just won't. Well, this evening I got caught up by one of the most awful bores you ever met.'

She drank deeply of the gla.s.s brought by Jeavons, and began telling him the story. Widmerpool took me aside.

'Did I hear you say you had met Mildred before?'

He spoke anxiously.

'When I was about nine or ten.'

'What on earth do you mean?'