“Are you fit again now?”
“I am better.”
He spoke with gravity.
“But I intend to take care of myself,” he added. “My mother often tells me I go at things too hard. Besides, I don’t really get enough air and exercise — without which one can never be truly robust.”
“Do you still go down to Barnes and drive golf-balls into a net?”
“Whenever feasible.”
He made not the smallest acknowledgment of the feat of memory on my part — with which, personally, I felt rather satisfied — that had called to mind this detail (given years before at the Leroys’) of his athletic exercises in outer London. The illusion that egoists will be pleased, or flattered, by interest taken in their habits persists throughout life; whereas, in fact, persons like Widmerpool, in complete subjection to the ego, are, by the nature of that infirmity, prevented from supposing that the minds of others could possibly be occupied by any subject far distant from the egoist’s own affairs.
“Actually, one can spend too much time on sport if one is really going to get on,” said Widmerpool. “And then I have my Territorials.”
“You were going to be a solicitor when we last met.”
“That would hardly preclude me from holding a Territorial officer’s commission,” said Widmerpool, smiling as broadly as his small mouth would allow, as if this were a repartee of quite unusual neatness.
“Of course it wouldn’t.”
His remark seemed to me immensely silly.
“I am with a firm of solicitors — Turnbull, Welford and Puckering, to be exact,” he said. “But you may be sure that I have other interests too. Some of them not unimportant, I might add.”
He smiled with some self-satisfaction, but clearly did not wish to be questioned further, at least there and then, regarding his professional activities. That was reasonable enough in the circumstances. However, his next words surprised me. Giving a short intake of breath, he said in a lower voice, with one of those unexpected outbursts of candour that I remembered from La Grenadière: “Do you know our host and hostess well? I have been on excellent terms with the family for a number of years, but this is the first time I have been asked to dinner. Of course I really know the Gorings better.”
This admission regarding his invitation to dine at Eaton Square was apparently intended to convey some hint, or confession, of past failure; although at the same time Widmerpool seemed half inclined by his tone to impart the news of his better acquaintance with the Gorings equally as a matter for congratulation. Indeed, he was evidently unable to decide in his own mind whether this allegedly long familiarity with the Walpole-Wilsons was — in the light of this being his first appearance in the house — something to boast of, or conceal.
Our conversation, taking place intermittently, while people continually arrived in the room, was several times broken off when one or other of us was introduced to, or spoke with, another guest. Two of the girls present I had not met before. The taller, Lady Anne Stepney, wore an evening dress that had seen better days: which looked, indeed, rather like an old nightdress furbished up for the occasion. She seemed quite unconcerned about her decidedly untidy appearance, her bearing in some respects resembling Eleanor’s, though she was much prettier than Eleanor, with large dark eyes and reddish hair. Her name was familiar to me, for what reason I could not at first recall. The lively, gleaming little Jewess in a scarlet frock, who came into the room on the heels of Lady Anne, was announced as “Miss Manasch,” and addressed by the Walpole-Wilsons as “Rosie.” Both girls were immediately, and simultaneously, engaged by Archie Gilbert, who happened to be free at their moment of entering the room.
Over by the window, Margaret Budd, a beauty, was talking to Pardoe, a Grenadier; and laughing while he demonstrated with a small shovel taken from the fireplace a scooping shot, successful or the reverse, that he, or someone known to him had recently performed on the links. When she laughed, Margaret looked like an immensely — almost ludicrously — pretty child. She was, as it were, the female equivalent of Archie Gilbert: present at every dance, always lovely, always fresh, and yet somehow quite unreal. She scarcely spoke at all, and might have been one of those huge dolls which, when inclined backwards, say “Ma-ma” or “Pa-pa”: though impossible to imagine in any position so undignified as that required for the mechanism to produce these syllables: equally hard to conceive her dishevelled, or bad-tempered, or, indeed, capable of physical passion — though appearances may be deceptive in no sphere so much as the last. Never without a partner, usually booked up six or seven dances ahead, this was her third or fourth season — so Barbara had once pointed out — and there had, as yet, been no sign of her getting engaged. “Margaret is rather a Guardee’s girl,” Barbara had added, evidently intending the label to imply no great compliment in her own eyes.
Widmerpool’s presence reminded me that Margaret was cousin of the Budd who had been Captain of the Eleven one year at school; and I remembered the story Stringham had told me, years before, of Widmerpool’s pleased acceptance — delight almost — on being struck in the face with a banana thrown by that comparatively notable cricketer. I could not help toying with the fantasy that some atavistic strain, deep-seated in the Budd family, might cause Margaret to assail Widmerpool in similar manner; perhaps later in the evening when dessert, tempting as a missile, appeared at the Walpole-Wilson’s table. Such a vision was improbable to an almost infinite degree, because Margaret was the kindest, quietest creature imaginable; really, I think, almost wholly unaware, in gentle concentration on herself, of the presence of most of the people moving about her. Even her laughter was rare, and its audible provocation before dinner that evening by his strokes in the air with the shovel did Pardoe credit.
From a girl’s point of view, there was no doubt something to be said for considering Pardoe the most interesting person present that evening. He had recently inherited a house on the Welsh Border (Jacobean in architecture, though with more ancient historical associations going back to the Wars of the Roses), together with enough money, so it was said, to “keep up” the estate. He was an agreeable, pink-faced ensign, very short, square, and broad-shouldered, with a huge black moustache, brushed out so forcibly that it seemed to be false and assumed for a joke. Such affluent young men were known to have a tendency to abandon dances and frequent night-clubs. Pardoe, however, was still available, so it appeared; no one could tell for how long. Unlike Archie Gilbert, he had a great deal to say for himself — though his newly acquired possessions made small-talk scarcely necessary — and, as he modestly treated his own appearance as a matter for laughter, the moustache was a considerable asset in his anecdotes. He had at last abandoned the shovel, and, mildly interested in music had become engaged in some operatic argument with Miss Manasch. To this discussion Sir Gavin, from the background where he had been hovering, his moustache bristling more than ever, now cut in with the emphatic words:
“No one could sing it like Slezak.”
“Did you ever hear him in Lohengrin?” demanded Pardoe, taking the ends of his own moustache with both hands, as if about to tear it off and reveal himself in a new identity.
“Many a time and oft,” said Sir Gavin, defiantly. “But what was that you were saying about ldomeneo?”
All three of them embarked clamorously on a new musical dispute. The rest of us chatted in a desultory way. Barbara arrived late. She was wearing her gold dress that I knew of old did not suit her; and that spirit of contradiction that especially governs matters of the heart caused the fact that she was not looking her best to provoke in me a stab of affection. Even so, I was still able to wonder whether the situation between us — between myself and her, would perhaps be more accurate — remained quite unchanged; and, as I let go of her small cluster of fingers — each one of which I was conscious of as a single entity while I held her hand — I thought that perhaps that night I should not, as in past months, experience the same recurrent torments as she danced with other men. As soon as she had come into the room, Widmerpool skirted the sofa and made towards her, leaving me with the impression that I might in some manner have appeared unfriendly to him after our comparative intimacy in France, I decided to try to correct this apprehension, should it exist, later in the evening when suitable opportunity might arise.