“And you, Quiggin, are you happy?” Sillery asked.
Quiggin shook his head at the rock-buns, held out towards him once more; and, apparently taking the question to have a more general application than as a mere enquiry as to whether or not he wanted another cup of tea, or was comfortable sitting, as he was, at the springless end of the sofa, said in reply: “No, I’m not.” Sillery was enchanted with this answer.
“Not happy?” he said, as if he could not believe his ears.
“Never seem to get enough peace to get any work done,” said Quiggin. “Always somebody or other butting in.”
Sillery beamed, proffering the plate once more round the room, though without success. Quiggin, as if something, had been released within him, now began to enlarge on the matter of his own exasperation. He said: “All anyone here seems interested in is in messing about with some game or other, or joining some society or club, or sitting up all night drinking too much. I thought people came to the university to study, not to booze and gas all the time.”
“Very good, Quiggin, very good,” said Sillery. “You find we all fall woefully short of your own exacting standards — formed, no doubt, in a more austere tradition.”
He smiled and rubbed his hands, entranced. It even seemed that he might have been waiting for some such outburst on Quiggin’s part: and Quiggin himself somehow gave the air of having made the same speech on other occasions.
“What an extraordinary person,” said Members, under his breath, a remark probably audible only to myself, owing to the fact that the extreme lowness of the arm-chair in which I was sitting brought my ear almost level with Members’s mouth, as he rested with his elbow on the floor. Sillery said: “What do you think, Mark? Do you find that we are too frivolous?”
Members began to say: “My dear Sillers —” but, before he could speak the phrase, Sillery cut him short by adding: “I thought you might be in agreement with Quiggin as your homes are so close, Mark.”
After he had said this, Sillery stood back a bit, as if to watch the effect of his words, still holding the plate of rock-buns in his hand. If he had hoped to strike dismay into the hearts of his listeners, he could hardly have expected a more successful result so far as Quiggin and Members were concerned. Members, thoroughly, put out, went pink in the face; Quiggin’s expression became distinctly sourer than before, though he did not change colour. “I had a suspicion that neither of you was aware of this,” said Sillery. “But you must live practically in the same street.”
He nodded his head several times, and changed the subject; or, at least, varied it by asking if I had ever read Jude the Obscure. I realised, without achieving any true comprehension of what Sillery was about, that the object of revealing publicly that Members and Quiggin lived close to each other during the vacation was intended in some manner to bring both to heeclass="underline" in any case I did not know enough of either at the time to appreciate that each might prefer that any details regarding his home life should be doled out by himself alone.
Sillery abandoned the subject after this demonstration of strength on his part, so that the rest of his guests were left in ignorance even of the name of the town Members and Quiggin inhabited. The American and the Finn slipped away soon after this, on the plea that they must work; in spite of protests from Sillery that no one could, or should, work on Sunday evening. As they were leaving, another visitor could be heard coming up the stairs. He must have stood aside for them to pass him, because a moment later, speaking in a resonant, musical voice, like an actor’s or practised after-dinner speaker’s, he said, as he came through the door: “Hallo, Sillers, I hoped I might catch you at home.”
This new arrival I recognised as Bill Truscott, who had gone down two or three years before. I had never previously met him, but I had seen him and knew his name well, because he was one of those persons who, from their earliest years, are marked down to do great things; and who so often remain a legend at school, or university, for a period of time after leaving the one or the other: sometimes long after any hope remains, among the world at large, that promise of earlier years will be fulfilled. Sillery was known to be deeply attached to Bill Truscott, though to what extent he inwardly accepted the claims put forward for Truscott’s brilliant future, it was not easy to say. Outwardly, of course, he was a strong promoter of these claims and, in some respects, Truscott could be described as the most characteristic specimen available of what Sillery liked his friends to be; that is to say he was not only successful and ambitious, but was also quite well off for a bachelor (a state he showed no sign of relinquishing), as his father, a Harley Street specialist, recently deceased, had left him a respectable capital. He had gained a good degree, though only by the skin of his teeth, it was rumoured, and, since academical honours represented a good deal of his stock-in-trade, this close shave regarding his “first” was sometimes spoken of as an ominous sign. However, the chief question seemed still to be how best his brilliance should be employed. To say that he could not make up his mind whether to become in due course Prime Minister, or a great poet, might sound exaggerated (though Short had so described Truscott’s dilemma), but in general he was at any rate sufficiently highly regarded in the university, by those who had heard of him, to make him appear a fascinating, and almost alarming, figure.
After sitting down beside Sillery, Truscott at first hardly spoke at all; but at the same time his amused smile acted as a sort of charm on the rest of the company, so that no one could possibly have accused him, on the grounds of this silence, of behaving in an ungracious manner. He was tall and dark, with regular features, caught rather too close together, and the most complete self-assurance that can be imagined. His clothes and hair, even his face, seemed to give out a kind of glossiness, and sense of prosperity, rather like Monsieur Lundquist’s. He was already going a little grey, and this added to his air of distinction, preventing him from looking too young and inexperienced. I addressed a remark to him which he acknowledged simply by closing and opening his eyes, making me feel that, the next time I spoke, I ought to make an attempt to find something a trifle less banal to say: though his smile at the same time absolved me from the slightest blame in falling so patently short of his accustomed standards. I was not conscious of being at all offended by this demeanour: on the contrary, Truscott’s comportment seemed a kind of spur to encourage all who came to win his esteem; although — and perhaps because — he was obviously prepared to offer nothing in return.
If Bill Truscott’s arrival in the room made a fairly notable impression on myself, chiefly on account of the glowing picture Short had drawn of his charm and brilliance, the rest of Sillery’s party treated Truscott, if possible, with even closer attention. Members moved unobtrusively from the floor to a chair, and Quiggin, one of the legs of whose trousers had rucked up, revealing long hirsute pants of grey material, pulled the end of his trouser down towards a black sock, and sat more upright on the sofa. Both he and Members evidently felt that the opportunity had now arrived for Sillery’s disclosure regarding the adjacency of their respective homes to be forgotten in discussion of more important matters. Stringham turned out to know Truscott already. He said: “Hallo, Bill,” and for a minute or two they spoke of some party in London where they had met a month or two before.
“You must tell us about the polite world, Bill,” said Sillery, perching on the side of Truscott’s chair and slipping an arm round his shoulder. “Fancy the hostesses allowing you to steal away from their clutches and drop in to visit us here.”