“Uncle George used to get his liquid manure from Mr. Widmerpool’s father when he was alive,” said Eleanor curtly. “We tried some at home, but it was a failure. Different soil, I suppose.”
Widmerpool’s old acquaintance with Barbara’s family, and his own presence that night at the Walpole-Wilsons’, were now both satisfactorily explained. There could be no doubt that the fertiliser mentioned by Eleanor was the basic cause of the secrecy with which he had always been inclined to veil his father’s business activities; for, although there was, of course, nothing in the faintest degree derogatory about agricultural science — Lord Goring himself was, after all, evidence of that fact — I had been associated with Widmerpool long enough to know that he could not bear to be connected personally with anyone, or anything, that might be made, however remotely, the subject of ridicule which could recoil even in a small degree upon himself. He was, for example, as I discovered much later, almost physically incapable of making himself agreeable to a woman whom he regarded as neither good-looking nor, for some other reason, worth cultivating: a trait vested, perhaps, in a kind of natural timidity, and a nature that required a sense of support from the desirable qualities of company in which he found himself. This characteristic of his, I can now see, was an effort to obtain a kind of vicarious acquisition of power from others. Accordingly, any sense of failure or inadequacy in his surroundings made him uncomfortable. The mere phrase “artificial manure” told the whole story.
However, when it became clear that Eleanor did not much like him, I found myself, I hardly knew why, assuring her that Widmerpool, at school and in France, had always been quite an amiable eccentric; though I could not explain, then or now, why I felt his defence a duty; still less why I should have arbitrarily attributed to him what was, after all, an almost wholly imaginary personality, in fact one in many respects far from accurate. At that time I still had very little idea of Widmerpool’s true character: neither its qualities nor defects.
“They had a small house on the Pembringham estate while experimenting with the manure,” said Eleanor. “Aunt Constance is frightfully kind, when she isn’t feeling too ill, you know, and used to ask them over quite often. That was where I first met him. Now his mother has taken a cottage near us at Hinton. Barbara doesn’t mind Mr. Widmerpool. Of course, she has often met him. I don’t really care for him very much. We were absolutely at our wits’ end for a man to-night, so he had to come. Have you ever seen his mother?”
I did not hear Eleanor’s views on Mrs. Widmerpool, because at that moment the music ceased; and, after clapping had died down and couples round us dispersed, the subject of Widmerpool and his family was quickly forgotten.
The ball took its course: dance-tune following dance-tune: partner following partner. From time to time, throughout the course of the evening, I saw Widmerpool ploughing his way round the room, as if rowing a dinghy in rough water, while he talked energetically to girls more often than not unknown to me; though chosen, no doubt, with the care devoted by him to any principle in which he was interested. He did not, as it happened, appear to be dancing much with any member of the Walpole-Wilson dinner-party, perhaps regarding them, when considered as individuals, as unlikely to lead to much that he could personally turn to profit. Later on in the evening, while sitting out with Miss Manasch, I was suddenly made aware of him again when he stumbled over her foot on his way upstairs.
“I know who he is!” she said, when he had apologised and disappeared from sight with his partner. “He is the Frog Footman. He ought to be in livery. Has he danced with Anne yet?”
“Anne Stepney?”
“They would be so funny together.”
“Is she a friend of yours?”
“We were at the same finishing school in Paris.”
“They didn’t do much finishing on her, surely?”
“She is so determined to take a different line from that very glamorous sister of hers.”
“Is Peggy Stepney glamorous?”
“You must have seen pictures of her.”
“A friend of mine called Charles Stringham used to talk about her.”
“Oh, yes — Charles Stringham,” said Miss Manasch. “That has been over a long time. I think he is rather a fast young man, isn’t he? I seem to have heard.”
She laughed, and rolled her beady little eyes, straightening her frock over plump, well-shaped little legs. She looked quite out of place in this setting; intended by nature to dance veiled, or, perhaps, unveiled, before the throne of some Oriental potentate — possibly one of those exacting rulers to whom Sir Gavin’s well-mannered diplomatists of the past might have appealed — or occupying herself behind the scenes in all the appetising labyrinth of harem intrigue. There existed the faintest suspicion of blue hairs upon her upper hp, giving her the look of a beauty of the Byronic era.
“Anne Stepney said he was pompous. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen him for ages.”
“Anne thinks Charles Stringham pompous, does she?” said Miss Manasch, laughing again quietly to herself.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know him. At least only by reputation. I have met his mother, who is, of course, too wonderful. They say she is getting rather tired of Commander Foxe and thinking of having another divorce. Charles was more or less engaged to Anne’s sister, Peggy, at one stage, as I suppose you know. That’s off now, as I said. I hear about Peggy occasionally from a cousin of mine, Jimmy Klein, who has a great passion for her.”
“Is Charles about to marry anyone at the moment?”
“I don’t think so.”
I had the impression that she knew more about Stringham than she was prepared to divulge, because her face assumed an expression that made her features appear more Oriental than ever. It was evident that she possessed affiliations with circles additional to — perhaps widely different from — those to be associated with Walpole-Wilsons, Gorings, or Huntercombes. Only superficially invested with the characteristics of girls moving within that world, she was at once coarser in texture and at the same time more subtle. Up to that moment she had been full of animation, but now all at once she became melancholy and silent.
“I think I shall leave.”
“Have you had enough?”
“Going home seems the only alternative to sitting among the coats,” she said.
“Whatever for?”
“I comb my hair there.”
“But does it need combing?”
“And while I tug at it, I cry.”
“Surely not necessary to-night?”
“Perhaps not,” she said.
She began to laugh softly to herself once more; and, a minute or two later, went off with some partner who appeared satisfied that the moment had come to claim her. I set about looking for Barbara, with whom at the beginning of the evening I had danced only once. She was in one of the rooms downstairs, talking excitedly to a couple of young men, but she seemed not unwilling to leave their company.