“How are you getting on, Jenkins?” he asked, at last agreeing, though with apparent reluctance, to occupy an arm-chair. “You have a nice view from here, I see.”
He rose again, and stared out of the window for a minute or two, at the place where clouds had begun to darken the sky. The sound of undergraduate voices came up from below. Le Bas turned his gaze down on the passers-by.
“I expect you know the story of Calverley throwing pebbles at the Master of Balliol’s window,” he said. “Just to make him look out for the benefit of some visitors. Parkinson was some sort of a connection of Calverley’s, I believe. I saw Parkinson the other day. In fact I rowed in a Duffers’ Eight with him. Parkinson was in your time, wasn’t he? Or am I confusing dates?”
“Yes, he was. He only went down from here last year.”
“He missed his ‘blue,’ didn’t he?”
“I think he was only tried out a couple of times.”
“Who else is there from my house?”
“Stringham went down last term.”
“Went down, did he? Was he sent down?”
“No, he —”
“Of course I remember Stringham,” said Le Bas. “Wrote a shocking hand. Never saw such a fist. What was he sent down for?”
“He wasn’t sent down. He got a job with Donners-Brebner. I am going to see him tomorrow.”
“Who else?” insisted Le Bas, who had evidently never heard of Donners-Brebner.
“I saw Templer not long ago. He is in the City now.”
“Templer?” said Le Bas. “Oh, yes, Templer. In the City, is he? Did he go up to the university?”
“No.”
“Probably just as well,” said Le Bas. “Still it might have toned him down a bit. I suppose as it is he will spend the rest of his life wearing those startling socks. It was Templer, wasn’t it, who always wore those dreadful socks?”
“Yes — it was.”
“Still, he may grow out of it,” said Le Bas.
“Or them,” I said; and, since Le Bas did not smile, added: “I stayed in the same French family as Widmerpool, the summer after I left.”
“Ah yes, Widmerpool.”
Le Bas thought for a long time. He climbed up on to the fender, and began to lift himself by the edge of the mantelpiece. I thought for a moment that he might be going to hoist himself right on to the shelf; perhaps lie there.
“I was never quite happy about Widmerpool,” he admitted at last.
This statement did not seem to require an answer.
“As you probably know,” said Le Bas, “there were jokes about an overcoat in the early days.”
“I remember being told something about it.”
“Plenty of keenness, but somehow —”
“He used to train hard.”
“And a strong — well —” Le Bas seemed rather at a loss, ending somewhat abruptly with the words: “Certain moral qualities, admirable so far as they went, but —”
I supposed he was thinking of the Akworth affair, which must have caused him a good deal of trouble.
“He seemed to be getting on all right when I saw him in France.”
This statement seemed in the main true. “I am glad to hear it,” said Le Bas. “Very glad. I hope he will find his level in life. Which college did you say?”
“He didn’t go to the university.”
“What is he going to be?”
“A solicitor.”
“Do none of my pupils consider a degree an advantage in life? I hope you will work hard for yours.”.
Facetiously, I held up a copy of Stubbs’s Charters that happened to be lying at hand on the table. “Do you know Sillery?” I asked.
“Sillery? Sillery? Oh, yes, of course I know Sillery,” Le Bas said; but he did not rise to this bait. There was a pause.
“Well, I have enjoyed our talk,” Le Bas said. “I expect I shall see you on Old Boy Day.”
He got up from the chair, and stood for a few seconds, as if undecided whether or not to bring his visit to an end.
“Friendships have to be kept up,” he said, unexpectedly.
I suppose that his presence had recalled — though unconsciously — the day of Braddock alias Thorne; because for some reason, inexplicable to myself, I said: “Like Heraclitus.”
Le Bas looked surprised.
“You know the poem, do you?” he said. “Yes, I remember you were rather keen on English.”
Then he turned and made for the door, still apparently pondering the questions that this reference to Heraclitus had aroused in his mind. Having reached the door, he stopped. There was evidently some affirmation he found difficulty in getting out. After several false starts, he said: “You know, Jenkins, do always try to remember one thing — it takes all sorts to make a world.”
I said that I would try to remember that.
“Good,” said Le Bas. “You will find it a help.”
I watched him from the window. He walked quickly in the direction of the main entrance of the college: suddenly he turned on his heel and came back, very slowly, towards my staircase, at the foot of which he stopped for about a minute then he moved off again at a moderate pace in another quarter: finally disappearing from sight, without leaving any impression of decision as to his next port of call. The episode of Braddock alias Thorne, called up by Le Bas’s visit, took on a more grotesque aspect than ever, when thought of now. I wondered whether Le Bas had himself truly accepted his own last proposition. Nothing in his behaviour had ever suggested that his chosen principles were built up on a deep appreciation of the diversity of human character. On the contrary, he had always demanded of his pupils certain easily recognisable conventions of conduct: though, at the same time, it occurred to me that the habit of making just such analyses of motive as this was precisely what Le Bas had a moment before so delicately deprecated in myself.
There are certain people who seem inextricably linked in life; so that meeting one acquaintance in the street means that a letter, without fail, will arrive in a day or two from an associate involuntarily harnessed to him, or her, in time. Le Bas’s appearance was one of those odd preludes that take place, and give, as it were, dramatic form, to occurrences that have more than ordinary significance. It is as if the tempo altered gradually, so that too violent a change of sensation should not take place; in this case, that some of the atmosphere of school should be reconstructed, although only in a haphazard fashion, as if for an amateur performance, in order that I should not meet Stringham in his new surroundings without a reminder of the circumstances in which we had first known one another.
For some reason, during the following day in London, I found myself thinking all the time of Le Bas’s visit; although it was long before I came to look upon such transcendental manipulation of surrounding figures almost as a matter of routine. The weather was bad. When the time came, I was glad to find myself in the Donners-Brebner building, although the innate dejection of spirit of that part of London was augmented by regarding its landscape from this huge and shapeless edifice, recently built in a style as wholly without ostensible order as if it were some vast prehistoric cromlech. Stringham’s office was on one of the upper storeys, looking north over the river. It was dark now outside, and lights were reflected in the water, from the oppressive and cheerless, as well as beautiful, riverside. Stringham looked welclass="underline" better than I had seen him for a long time.