This resolution was unexpected, to say the least. However, if he wanted to prolong the night in such company, I felt that determination to be his own affair. So far as I was myself concerned, I was not unwilling to discover more of someone like Mr. Deacon who had loomed as a mysterious figure in my mind in the manner of all persons discussed by grown-ups in the presence of a child.
We set off up the hill together, four abreast: Widmerpool and Gypsy Jones on the flanks. Across the road the coffee-stall came into sight, a spot of light round which the scarlet tunics and white equipment of one or two Guardsmen still flickered like the bright wings of moths attracted from nocturnal shadows by a flame. From the park rose the heavy scent of London on a summer night. Here, too, bands could be heard distantly throbbing. We crossed the road at the island and joined a knot of people round the stall, at the side of which, as if killing time while he waited for a friend late in arrival, an elderly person in a dinner-jacket was very slowly practising the Charleston, swaying his weight from one side of his patent leather shoes to the other, while he kept the tips of his fingers delicately in his coat pockets. Mr. Deacon glanced at him with disapproval, but acknowledged, though without warmth, the smirk proffered by a young man in a bright green suit, the uncomfortable colour of which was emphasised by auburn hair, erratically dyed. This was perhaps not a spot one might have chosen to soothe Widmerpool after his unfortunate experience with Barbara and the sugar. All the same, at the far end of the stall’s little counter, he seemed already to have found something to discuss with Gypsy Jones — aspects of the question of the Haig statue, possibly, or the merits of Isbister’s portrait-painting — and both of them seemed fairly happy. Mr. Deacon began to explain to me how contemporary Paris had become “altogether too rackety” for his taste.
“The Left Bank was all right when I met you in the Louvre with your family,” he said. “Wasn’t the Peace Conference in progress then? I didn’t take much interest in such things in those days. Now I know better. The truth is one gets too intimate with too many people if one stays in Montparnasse too long. I have come back to England for a little quiet. Besides, the French can be very interfering in their own particular way.”
Purveying War Never Pays! at midnight in the company of Gypsy Jones seemed, on the face of it, a capricious manner of seeking tranquillity; but — as I knew nothing of the life abandoned by Mr. Deacon to which such an undertaking was alternative — the extent of its potentially less tempting contrasts was impossible to gauge. Regarded from a conventional standpoint, Mr. Deacon gave the impression of having gone down-hill since the days when he had been accustomed to visit my parents, to whom he made little or no reference beyond expression of pious hopes that both of them enjoyed good health. It appeared that he was himself now running a curiosity-shop in the neighbourhood of Charlotte Street. He pressed me to “look him up” there at the earliest opportunity, writing the address on the back of an envelope. In spite of his air of being set apart from worldly things, Mr. Deacon discoursed with what at least sounded like a good deal of practical common sense regarding the antique business, hours spent in the shop, time given to buying, closing arrangements, and such material points. I did not know what his financial position might be, but the shop was evidently providing, for the time being, an adequate livelihood.
“There are still a few people who are prepared to pay for nice things,” he remarked.
When given coffee, he had handed back his cup, after examination, in objection to the alleged existence on the rim of the china of cracks and chips” in which poison might collect.”
“I am always worried as to whether or not the crockery is properly washed up in places like this,” he said.
Reflectively, he turned in his hand the cup that had replaced the earlier one, and continued to digress on the general inadequacy of sanitary precautions in shops and restaurants.
“It’s just as bad in London as in Paris cafés — worse in some ways,” he said.
He had just returned the second cup as equally unsatisfactory, when someone at my elbow asked: “Can one get matches here?” I was standing half-turned away from the counter, listening to Mr. Deacon, and did not see this new arrival. For some reason the voice made me glance towards Widmerpool; not because its tone bore any resemblance to his own thick utterance, but because the words suggested, oddly enough, Widmerpool’s almost perpetual presence as an unvaried component of everyday life rather than as an unexpected element of an evening like this one. A moment later someone touched my arm, and the same voice said: “Where are you off to, may I ask, in all those fine clothes?” A tall, pale young man, also in evening dress, though without a hat, was standing beside me.
At first sight Stringham looked just the same; indeed, the fact that on the former occasion, as now, he had been wearing a white tie somehow conveyed the illusion that he had been in a tail-coat for all the years since we had last met. He looked tired, perhaps rather irritable, though evidently pleased to fall in like this with someone known to him. I was conscious of that peculiar feeling of restraint in meeting someone, of whom I had once seen so much, now dropped altogether from everyday life: an extension — and refinement, perhaps — of the sensation no doubt mutually experienced between my parents and Mr. Deacon on that day in the Louvre: more acute, because I had been far more closely associated with Stringham than ever they with Mr. Deacon. The presence of Widmerpool at the stall added a touch of fantasy to Stringham’s appearance at that spot; for it was as if Widmerpool’s own antics had now called his mimic into being as inexorable accessory to any real existence to which Widmerpool himself might aspire. I introduced Mr. Deacon and Gypsy Jones.
“Why, hallo, Stringham,” said Widmerpool, putting down his coffee-cup with a clatter and puffing out his cheeks in a great demonstration of heartiness. “We haven’t met since we were at Le Bas’s.”
He thought, no doubt — if he thought of the matter at all — that Stringham and I were friends who continued to see each other often, inevitably unaware that this was, in fact, our first meeting for so long. Stringham, on his side, clearly supposed that all four of us — Widmerpool, Mr. Deacon, Gypsy Jones, and myself — had been spending an evening together; though it was obvious that he could determine no easy explanation for finding me in Widmerpool’s company, and judged our companionship immensely funny. He laughed a lot when I explained that Widmerpool and I had been to the Huntercombes’ dance.
“Well, well,” he said. “It’s a long time since I went to a dance. How my poor mother used to hate them when my sister was first issued to an ungrateful public. Was it agony?”
“May one inquire why you should suppose a splendid society ball to have been agony?” asked Mr. Deacon, rather archly.
There could be no doubt that, at first sight, he had taken a great fancy to Stringham. He spoke in his ironically humorous voice from deep down in his throat.
“In the first place,” said Stringham, “I rather dislike being crowded and uncomfortable — though, heaven knows, dances are not the only places where that happens. A most serious criticism I put forward is that one is expected, when attending them, to keep at least moderately sober.”
When he said this, it struck me that Stringham had already, perhaps, consumed a few drinks before meeting us.
“And otherwise behave with comparative rectitude?” said Mr. Deacon, charmed by this answer. “I believe I understand you perfectly.”
“Exactly,” said Stringham. “For that reason I am now on my way — as I expect you are too — to Milly Andriadis’s. I expect that will be crowded and uncomfortable too, but at least one can behave as one wishes there.”