Peter Templer, as I have said, rarely wrote letters, so that we had, to some extent, lost touch with him. Left to himself there could be little doubt that he would, in Stringham’s phrase, “relapse into primeval barbarism.” Stringham often spoke of him, and used to talk, almost with regret, of the adventures they had shared at schooclass="underline" already, as it were, beginning to live in the past. Some inward metamorphosis was no doubt the cause of Stringham’s melancholia, because his attacks of gloom, although qualified by fairly frequent outbursts of high spirits, could almost be given that name. There was never a moment when he became reconciled to the life going on round him. “The buildings are nice,” he used to say. “But not the undergraduates.”
“What do you expect undergraduates to be like?”
“Keep bull-pups and drink brandies-and-soda. They won’t do as they are.”
“Your sort sound even worse.”
“Anyway, what can one do here? I am seriously thinking of running away and joining the Foreign Legion or the North-West Mounted Police — whichever work the shorter hours.”.
“It is the climate.”
“One feels awful if one drinks, and worse if one’s sober. I knew Buster’s picture of the jolly old varsity was not to be trusted. After all he never tried it himself.”
“How is he?”
“Doing his best to persuade my mother to let Glimber to an Armenian,” said Stringham, and speaking with perhaps slightly more seriousness: “You know, Tuffy was very much against my coming up.”
“What on earth did it have to do with her?”
“She takes a friendly interest in me,” said Stringham, laughing. “She behaved rather well when I was in Kenya as a matter of fact. Used to send me books, and odds and ends of gossip, and all that sort of thing. One appreciates that in the wide open spaces. She is not a bad old girl. Many worse.”
He was always a trifle on the defensive about Miss Weedon. I had begun to understand that his life at home was subject to exterior forces like Buster’s disapproval, or Miss Weedon’s regard, which brought elements of uncertainty and discord into his family life, not only accepted by him, but almost enjoyed. He went on: “There has been talk of my staying here only a couple of years and going into the Foot Guards. You know there is some sort of arrangement now for entering the army through the university. That was really my mother’s idea.”
“What does Miss Weedon think?”
“She favours coming to London and having a good time. I am rather with her there. The Household Cavalry has been suggested, too. One is said — for some reason — to ‘have a good time in The Tins’.”
“And Buster’s view?”
“He would like me to remain here as long as possible — four years, post-graduate course, research fellowship, anything so long as I stay away — since I shattered his dream that I might settle in Kenya.” It was after one of these conversations in which he had complained of the uneventfulness of his day that I suggested that we should drop in on Sillery.
“What is Sillery?”
I repeated some of Short’s description of Sillery, adding a few comments of my own.
“Oh, yes,” said Stringham. “I remember about him now. Well, I suppose one can try everything once.”
We were, as it happened, first to arrive at that particular party. Sillery, who had just finished writing a pile of letters, the top one of which, I could not avoid seeing, was addressed to a Cabinet Minister, was evidently delighted to have an opportunity to work over Stringham, whom he recognised immediately on hearing the name.
“How is your mother?” he said, “Do you know, I have not seen her since the private view of the Royal Academy in 1914. No, I believe we met later at a party given by Mrs. Hwfa Williams, if my memory serves me.”
He continued with a stream of questions, and for once Stringham, who had shown little interest in coming to the party, seemed quite taken aback by Sillery’s apparent familiarity with his circumstances.
“And your father?” said Sillery, grinning, as if in spite of himself, under his huge moustache. “Pretty well.”
“You were staying with him in Kenya?”
“For a few months.”
“The climate suits him all right?”
“I think so.”
“That height above sea-level is hard on the blood-pressure,” Sillery said; “but your father is unexpectedly strong in spite of his light build. Does that shrapnel wound of his ever give trouble?”
“He feels it in thundery weather.”
“He must take care of it,” said Sillery. “Or he will find himself on his back for a time, as he did after that spill on the Cresta. Has he run across Dicky Umfraville yet?”
“They see a good deal of each other.”
“Well, well,” said Sillery. “He must take care about that, too. But I must attend to my other guests, and not talk all the time about old friends.”
I had the impression that Sillery regarded Stringham’s father as a falling market, so far as business was concerned; and, although he did not mention Buster, he was evidently far more interested in Mrs. Foxe’s household than that of her former husband. However, the room was now filling up, and Sillery began introducing some of the new arrivals to each other and to Stringham and myself. There was a sad Finn — called as nearly as I could catch — Vaalkiipaa: Honthorst, an American Rhodes Scholar, of millionaire stock on both sides of his family: one of Sillery’s pupils, a small nervous young man who never spoke, addressed as “Paul,” whose surname I did not discover: and Mark Members, of some standing among the freshmen of my year, on account of a poem published in Public School Verse and favourably noticed by Edmund Gosse. Up to that afternoon I had only seen Members hurrying about the streets, shaking from his round, somewhat pasty face a brownish, uneven fringe that grew low on his forehead and made him look rather like a rag doll, or marionette: an air augmented by brown eyes like beads, and a sprinkling of freckles. His tie, a broad, loose knot, left the collar of his shirt a little open. I admired this lack of self-consciousness regarding what I then — rather priggishly — looked on as eccentricity of dress. He appeared to have known Sillery all his life, calling him “Sillers,” a form of address which, in spite of several tea-parties attended, I had not yet summoned courage to employ. The American, Honthorst’s, hair was almost as uncontrolled as that of Members. It stood up on the top of his head like the comb, or crest, of a hoopoe, or cassowary, this bird-like appearance being increased by a long, bare neck, ending in a white collar cut drastically low. Honthorst had a good-natured, dazed countenance, and it was hard to know what to say to him. Vaalkiipaa was older than the rest of the undergraduates present. He had a round, sallow face with high cheekbones, and, although anxious to be agreeable, he could not understand why he was not allowed to talk about his work, a subject always vetoed by Sillery.