By now the crowd had thinned considerably, and the music of the hunchback’s accordion had ceased. I was beginning to feel more than a little exhausted, yet, unable to make up my mind to go home, I wandered rather aimlessly round the house, throughout which the remaining guests were now sitting about in pairs, or larger groups. Chronological sequence of events pertaining to this interlude of the party became afterwards somewhat confused in my head. I can recall a brief conversation with a woman — not pretty, though possessing excellent legs — on the subject of cheese, which she alleged to be unprocurable, at the buffet. Prince Theodoric and Sillery had disappeared, and already there was the impression, given by most parties, sooner or later, that the residue still assembled under Mrs. Andriadis’s roof was gradually, inexorably, sinking to a small band of those hard cases who can never tear themselves away from what still remains, for an hour or so longer, if not of gaiety, then at least some sort of mellow companionship, and protection from the austerities of the outer world.
Two young men strolled by, and I heard one of them say: “Poor Milly really got together quite an elegant crowd to-night.”
The other, who wore an orchid in his button-hole, replied: “I felt that Sillery imparted a faintly bourgeois note — and there were one or two extraordinary figures from the lofts of Chelsea.”
He added that, personally, he proposed to have “one more drink” before leaving, while the other murmured something about an invitation to “bacon and eggs at the Kit-Cat.” They parted company at this, and when the young man with the orchid returned from the bar, he set down his glass near me, and without further introduction, began to discuss, at large, the house’s style of decoration, of which he appeared strongly to disapprove.
“Of course it must have cost a fortune to have had all those carpets cut right up to the walls,” he said. “But why go and spoil everything by these appalling Italianate fittings — and the pictures — my God, the pictures.”
I asked if the house belonged to Mrs. Andriadis.
“Good heavens, no,” he said. “Milly has only taken it for a few months from a man named Duport.”
“Bob Duport?”
“Not an intimate friend of yours, I hope?”
“On the contrary.”
“Because his manners don’t attract me.”
“Nor me.”
“Not that I ever see him these days, but we were at the same college — before he was sent down.”
I commented to the effect that, however unsatisfactory its decoration might be, I found the house an unexpectedly sumptuous place for Duport to inhabit. The young man with the orchid immediately assured me that Duport was not short of money.
“He came into quite a bit,” he said. “And then he is one of those men money likes. He is in the Balkans at the moment — doing well there, too, I have no doubt. He is, I regret to say, that sort of man.”
He sighed,
“Is he married?”
“Rather a nice wife.”
Although I scarcely knew Bob Duport, he had always remained in my mind on account of his having been one of the company when Peter Templer, in a recently purchased car, had driven Stringham and myself into the ditch, together with a couple of shop-girls and another unprepossessing friend of Templer’s called Brent. That episode had been during the single term that Stringham had remained in residence at the university. The incident seemed absurd enough when looked back upon, but I had not greatly liked Duport. Now I felt, for some reason, inexplicably annoyed that he should own a house like this one, however ineptly decorated, and also be the possessor of a wife whom my informant — whose manner suggested absolute infallibility on such matters — regarded as attractive; while I myself, at the same time, lived a comparative hand-to-mouth existence in rooms, in my own case, there had never been any serious prospect of getting married. This seemed, on examination, a contrast from which I came out rather poorly.
Since living in London, I had seen Peter Templer several rimes, but, in the course of an interminable chain of anecdotes about his ever-changing circle of cronies, I could not remember the name of Duport figuring, so that I did not know whether or not the two of them continued to see each other. Peter himself had taken to the city like a duck to water. He now talked unendingly of “cleaning up a packet” and “making a killing”; money, with its multifarious imagery and restrictive mystique, holding a place in his mind only seriously rivalled by preoccupation with the pursuit of women: the latter interest having proportionately increased with opportunity to experiment in a wider field than formerly.
When we had lunched or dined together, the occasions had been enjoyable, although there had hardly been any renewal of the friendship that had existed between us at school. Peter did not frequent the world of dances because — like Stringham — he was bored by their unduly respectable environment.
“At least,” he said once, when discussing the matter, “I don’t go as a habit to the sort of dance you see reported in The Morning Post or The Times. I don’t say I have never attended similar entertainments in some huge and gloomy house in Bayswater or Holland Park — probably Jewish — if I happened to take a fancy to a girl who moves in those circles. There is more fun to be found amongst all that mahogany furniture and Moorish brasswork than you might think.”
In business, at least in a small way, he had begun to “make a bit on his own, and there seemed no reason to disbelieve his account of himself as looked upon in his firm as a promising young man. In fact, it appeared that Peter, so far from becoming the outcast from society prophesied by our housemaster, Le Bas, now showed every sign of being about to prove himself a notable success in life: an outcome that seemed to demand another of those revisions of opinion, made every day more necessary, in relation to such an enormous amount of material, accepted as incontrovertible at an earlier period of practical experience.
Thinking that if the young man with the orchid knew Duport, he might also know Peter, whom I had not by then seen for about a year, I asked if the two of them had ever met.
“I’ve never run across Templer,” he said. “But I’ve heard tell of him. As a matter of fact, I believe Duport married Templer’s sister, didn’t he? What was her name?”
“Jean.”
“That was it. A thin girl with blue eyes. I think they got married abroad — South America or somewhere, was it?”
The sudden awareness of displeasure felt a second earlier at the apparent prosperity of Duport’s general state was nothing to the pang I suffered on hearing this piece of news: the former sense of grievance caused, perhaps, by premonition that worse was to come. I had not, it was true, thought much of Jean Templer for years, having relegated any question of being, as I had once supposed, “in love” with her to a comparatively humble position in memory; indeed, regarding the incident as dating from a time when any such feelings were, in my own eyes, hopelessly immature, in comparison, for example, with sentiments felt for Barbara. However, I now found, rather to my own surprise, deep vexation in the discovery that Jean was the wife of someone so unsympathetic as Bob Duport.
Such emotions, sudden bursts of sexual jealousy that pursue us through life, sometimes without the smallest justification that memory or affection might provide, are like wounds, unknown and quiescent, that suddenly break out to give pain, or at least irritation, at a later season of the year, or in an unfamiliar climate. The party, and the young man with the orchid, supplied perfect setting for an attack of that kind. I was about to return to the subject of Duport, with a view to relieving this sense of annoyance by further unfavourable comment regarding his personality (as it had appeared to me in the past) in the hope that my views would find ready agreement, when I became suddenly aware that Stringham and Mrs. Andriadis were together engaged in vehement argument just beside the place we sat.