“It was Buster’s idea. He thought you would like it.”
“That was kind of him.”
“I expect you boys — can I still call you boys — are going to a matinee this afternoon.”
I told her that I had, unfortunately, to catch a train to the country.
“Oh, but that is too sad,” she said, seeming quite cast down. “Where are you making for?” I explained that the journey was to the west of England, where my father was on the staff of a Corps Headquarters. Thinking that the exigencies of army life might in all likelihood be unfamiliar to her, I added something about often finding myself in a place different from that in which I had spent previous holidays.
“I know all about the army,” she said. “My first husband was a soldier. That was ages ago, of course. Even apart from that we had a house on the Curragh, because he used to train his horses there — so that nothing about soldiering is a mystery to me.”
There was something curiously overpowering about her. Now she seemed to have attached the army to herself, like a piece of property rediscovered after lying for long years forgotten. Lord Warrington had, it appeared, commanded a cavalry brigade before he retired. She told stories of the Duke of Cambridge, and talked of Kitchener and his collection of china.
“Are you going to be a soldier too?” she asked.
“No.”
“I think Charles ought. Anyway for a time. But he doesn’t seem awfully keen.”
“No,” said Stringham, “he doesn’t.”
“But your father liked his time in the Grenadiers,” she insisted. “He always said it did him a lot of good.”
She looked so beseeching when she said this that Stringham burst out laughing; and I laughed too. Even Miss Weedon smiled at the notion that anything so transitory as service with the Grenadiers could ever have done Stringham’s father good. Stringham himself had seemed to be on the edge of one of his fits of depression; but now he cheered up for a time: though his mother seemed to exhaust his energies and subdue him. This was not surprising, considering the force of her personality, which perhaps explained some of Buster’s need for an elaborate mechanism of self-defence. Except this force, which had something unrestrained, almost alien, about it, she showed no sign whatever of her South African origin. It is true that I did not know what to expect as outward marks of such antecedents; though I had perhaps supposed that in some manner she would be less assimilated into the world in which she now lived. She said: “This is the last time you will see Charles until he comes back from Kenya.”
“We meet in the autumn.”
“I wish I wasn’t going,” Stringham said. “It really is the most desperate bore. Can’t I get out of it?”
“But, darling, you are sailing in two days’ time. I thought you wanted to go. And your father would be so disappointed.”
“Would he?”
His mother sighed. Stringham’s despondency, briefly postponed, was now once more in the ascendant. Miss Weedon said with emphasis: “But you will be back soon.”
Stringham did not answer; but he shot her a look almost of hatred. She was evidently used to rough treatment from him, because she appeared not at all put out by this, and rattled on about the letters she had been writing that morning. The look of disappointment she had shown earlier was to be attributed, perhaps, to her being still unaccustomed to having him at home again, with the kindness and cruelties his presence entailed for her. The meal proceeded. Miss Weedon and Mrs. Foxe became involved in a discussion as to whether or not the head-gardener at Glimber was selling the fruit for his own profit. Stringham and I talked of school affairs. The luncheon party — the whole house — was in an obscure way depressing. I had looked forward to coming there, but was quite glad when it was time to go.
“Write and tell me anything that may happen,” said Stringham, at the door. “Especially anything funny that Peter may do.”
I promised to report any of Templer’s outstanding adventures, and we arranged to meet in nine or ten months’ time.
“I shall long to come back to England,” Stringham said. “Not that I specially favour the idea of universities. Undergraduates all look so wizened, and suede shoes appear to be compulsory.”
Berkeley Square, as I drove through it, was cold and bright and remote: like Buster’s manner. I wondered how it would be to return to school with only the company of Templer for the following year; because there was no one else with any claim to take Stringham’s place, so that Templer and I would be left alone together. Stringham’s removal was going to alter the orientation of everyday life. I found a place in a crowded compartment, next to the engine, beside an elderly man wearing a check suit, who, for the whole journey, quarrelled quietly with a clergyman on the subject of opening the window, kept on taking down a dispatch-case from the rack, and rummaging through it for papers that never seemed to be there, and in a general manner reminded me of the goings-on of Uncle Giles.
*
Uncle Giles’s affairs had, in fact, moved recently towards something like a climax. After nearly two years of silence — since the moment when he had disappeared into the fog, supposedly on his way to Reading — nothing had been heard of him; until one day a letter had arrived, headed with the address of an hotel in the Isle of Man, the contents of which implied, though did not state, that he intended to get married. In anticipation of this contingency, my uncle advocated a thorough overhaul of the conditions of the Trust; and expressed, not for the first time, the difficulties that lay in the path of a man without influence.
This news caused my parents some anxiety; for, although Uncle Giles’s doings during the passage of time that had taken place were unknown in detail, his connection with Reading had been established, with fair certainty, to be the result of an association with a lady who lived there: some said a manicurist: others the widow of a garage-proprietor. There was, indeed, no reason why she should not have sustained both roles. The topic was approached in the family circle with even more gloom, and horrified curiosity, than Uncle Giles’s activities usually aroused: misgiving being not entirely groundless, since Uncle Giles was known to be almost as indiscriminate in dealings with the opposite sex as he was unreliable in business negotiation. His first serious misadventure, when stationed in Egypt as a young man, had, indeed, centred upon a love affair.
It was one of Uncle’Giles’s chief complaints that he had been “put” into the army — for which he possessed neither Mrs. Foxe’s romantic admiration nor her hard-headed grasp of military realities — instead of entering some unspecified profession in which his gifts would have been properly valued. He had begun his soldiering in a line regiment: later, with a view to being slightly better paid, exchanging into the Army Service Corps. I used to imagine him wearing a pill-box cap on the side of his head, making assignations under a sub-tropical sun with a beautiful lady dressed in a bustle and sitting in an open carriage driven by a coloured coachman; though such attire, as a matter of fact, belonged to a somewhat earlier period; and, even if circumstances resembled this picture in other respects, the chances were, on the whole, that assignations would be made, and kept, “in mufti.”
There had been, in fact, two separate rows, which somehow became entangled together: somebody’s wife, and somebody else’s money: to say nothing of debts. At one stage, so some of his relations alleged, there had even been question of court-martiaclass="underline" not so much to incriminate my unfortunate uncle as to clear his name of some of the rumours in circulation. The court-martial, perhaps fortunately, was never convened, but the necessity for Uncle Giles to send in his papers was unquestioned. He travelled home by South Africa, arriving in Cape Town a short time before the outbreak of hostilities with the Boers. In that town he made undesirable friends — no doubt also encountering at this period Mrs. Foxe’s father — and engaged in unwise transactions regarding the marketing of diamonds; happily not involving on his part any handling of the stones themselves. This venture ended almost disastrously; and, owing to the attitude taken up by the local authorities, he was unable to settle in Port Elizabeth, where he had once thought of earning a living. However, like most untrustworthy persons, Uncle Giles had the gift of inspiring confidence in a great many people with whom he came in contact. Even those who, to their cost, had known him for years, sometimes found difficulty in estimating the lengths to which he could carry his lack of reliability — and indeed sheer incapacity — in matters of business. When he returned to England he was therefore seldom out of a job, though usually, in his own words, “starting at the bottom” on an ascent from which great things were to be expected.