A Dance to the Music of Time: 1st Movement

  In the course of time I found that much difference of opinion existed as to the practical outcome of Sillery’s scheming, and I have merely presented the picture as first displayed to me through the eyes of Short. To Short, Sillery was a mysterious, politically-minded cardinal of the academical world, ‘never taking his tea without an intrigue’ (that was the phrase Short quoted); for ever plotting behind the arras. Others, of course, thought differently, some saying that the Sillery legend was based on a kind of kaleidoscope of muddled information, collected in Sillery’s almost crazed brain, that his boasted powers had no basis whatever in reality: others again said that Sillery certainly knew a great number of people and passed round a lot of gossip, which in itself gave him some claim to consideration as a comparatively influential person, though only a subordinate one. Sillery had his enemies, naturally, always anxious to denigrate his life’s work, and assert that he was nothing more than a figure of fun; and there was probably something to be said at least for the contention that Sillery himself somewhat exaggerated the effectiveness of his own activities. In short, Sillery’s standing remained largely a matter of opinion; though there could be no doubt about his turning out to be an important factor in shaping Stringham’s career at the university.

  Stringham had been due to come into residence the same term as myself, but he was thrown from a horse a day or two before his intended return to England, and consequently laid up for several months. As a result of this accident, he did not appear at his college until the summer, when he took against the place at once. He could scarcely be persuaded to visit other undergraduates, except one or two that he had known at school, and he used to spend hours together sitting in his room, reading detective stories, and complaining that he was bored. He had been given a small car by his mother and we would sometimes drive round the country together, looking at churches or visiting pubs.

  On the whole he had enjoyed Kenya. When I told him about Peter Templer and Gwen McReith—an anecdote that seemed to me of outstanding significance—he said: ‘Oh, well, that sort of thing is not as difficult as all that,’ and he proceeded to describe a somewhat similar incident, in which, after a party, he had spent the night with the divorced wife of a coffee planter in Nairobi. In spite of Madame Dubuisson, this story made me feel very inexperienced. I described Suzette to him, but did not mention Jean Templer.

  ‘There is absolutely nothing in it,’ Stringham said. ‘It is just a question of keeping one’s head.’

  He was more interested in what I had to report about Widmerpool, laughing a lot over Widmerpool’s horror on hearing the whole truth of Le Bas’s arrest. The narrative of the Scandinavians’ quarrel struck him only on account of the oddness of the tennis-court on which we had been playing the set. This surprised me, because the incident had seemed of the kind to appeal to him. He had, however, changed a little in the year or more that had passed since I had seen him; and, although the artificial categories of school life were now removed, I felt for the first time that the few months between us made him appreciably older than myself. There was also the question of money—perhaps suggested by Widmerpool’s talk on that subject—that mysterious entity, of which one had heard so much and so often without grasping more than that its ownership was desirable and its lack inconvenient: heard of, certainly, without appreciating that its possession can become as much part of someone as the nose on the face. Even Uncle Giles’s untiring contortions before the altar of the Trust, when considered in this light, now began to appear less grotesque than formerly; and I realised at last, with great clearness, that a sum like one hundred and eighty pounds a year might indeed be worth the pains of prolonged and acrimonious negotiation. Stringham was, in fact, not substantially richer than most undergraduates of his sort, and, being decidedly free with his money, was usually hard-up, but from the foothills of his background was, now and then, wafted the disturbing, aromatic perfume of gold, the scent which, even at this early stage in our lives, could sometimes be observed to act intoxicatingly on chance acquaintances; whose unexpected perseverance, and determination not to take offence, were a reminder that Stringham’s mother was what Widmerpool had described as ‘immensely wealthy’.

  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 school: 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 strea
m 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 cheek-bones, 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.

  Conversation was now mostly between Sillery and Members; with the awkward long silences which always characterised the teas. During one of these pauses, Sillery, pottering about the room with the plate of rock-buns, remarked: ‘There is a freshman named Quiggin who said he would take a dish of tea with me this afternoon. He comes from a modest home, and is, I think, a little sensitive about it, so I hope you will all be specially understanding with him. He is at one of the smaller colleges—I cannot for the moment remember which—and he has collected unto himself sundry scholarships and exhibitions, which is—I think you will all agree—much to his credit.’

  This was a fairly typical thumb-nail sketch of the kind commonly dispensed by Sillery, in anticipation of an introduction: true as far as it went, though giving little or no clue to the real Quiggin: even less to the reason why he had been asked to tea. Indeed, at that period, I did not even grasp that there was always a reason for Sillery’s invitations, though the cause might be merely to give opportunity for preliminary investigation: sometimes not worth a follow-up.

  No one, of course, made any comment after this speech about Quiggin, because there was really no suitable comment to make. The mention of scholarships once more started off Vaalkiipaa on the subject of his difficulties in obtaining useful instruction from attendance at lectures; while Honthorst, almost equally anxious to discuss educational matters in a serious manner, joined in on the question of gaps in the college library and—as he alleged—out-of-date methods of indexing. Honthorst persisted in addressing Sillery as ‘sir’, in spite of repeated requests from his host that he should discard this solecism. Sillery was deftly circumventing combined Finnish-American attack, by steering the conversation toward New England gossip by way of hunting in Maine—while at the same time extracting from Vaalkiipaa apparently unpalatable facts about the anti-Swedish movement in Finland—when Quiggin himself arrived: making his presence known by flinging open the door suddenly to its fullest extent, so that it banged against one of the bookcases, knocking over a photograph in a silver frame of three young men in top-hats standing in a row, arm-in-arm.

  ‘Come in,’ said Sillery, picking up the picture, and setting it back in its place. ‘Come in, Quiggin. Don’t be shy. We shan’t eat you. This is Liberty Hall. Let me introduce you to some of my young friends. Here is Mr. Cheston Honthorst, who has travelled all the way from America to be a member of my college: and this is Mr. Jenkins, reading history like yourself: and Mr. Stringham, who has been to East Africa, though his home is that beautiful house, Glimber: and Mr. Vaalkiipaa—rather a difficult name, which we shall soon find that we have all got so used to that we shan’t be able to understand how we ever found it difficult—and Paul, here, you probably know from Brightman’s lectures, which he tells me he loyally attends just as you do; and I nearly forgot Mr. Mark Members, whose name will be familiar to you if you like modern verse—and I am sure you do—so make a place on the sofa, Mark, and Quiggin can sit next to you.’

  At first sight, Quiggin seemed to be everything suggested by Sillery’s description. He looked older than the rest of us: older, even, than Vaalkiipaa. Squat, and already going bald, his high forehead gave him the profile of a professor in a comic paper. His neck was encircled with a starched and grubby collar, his trousers kept up by a belt which he constantly adjusted. For the first time since coming up I felt that I was at last getting into touch with the submerged element of the university, which, I had sometimes suspected, might have more to offer than was to be found in conventional undergraduate circles. Mark Members was evidently impressed by a similar—though in his case unsympathetic—sense of something unusual so far as Quiggin was concerned; because he drew away his legs, hitherto stretched the length of the sofa, and brought his knees right up to his chin, clasping his hands round them in the position shown in a picture (that used to hang in the nursery of a furnished house we had once inhabited at Colchester) called The Boyhood of Raleigh; while he regarded Quiggin with misgiving.

  ‘Couldn’t find the way up here for a long time,’ said Quiggin.

  He sat down on the sofa, and, speaking in a small, hard voice with a North Country inflexion, addressed himself to Members: seeming to be neither embarrassed by the company, nor by Sillery’s sledge-hammer phrases, aimed, supposedly, at putting him at his ease. He went on: ‘It’s difficult when you’re new to a place. I’ve been suffering a bit here’—indicating his left ear which was stuffed with yellowish cotton-wool—’so that I may not catch all you say too clearly.’

  Members offered the ghost of a smile; but there could be no doubt of his uneasiness, as he tried to catch Sillery’s eye. However, Sillery, determined that his eye was not to be caught by Members, said: ‘The first year is a great period of discovery—and of self-discovery, too. What do you say, Vaalkiipaa? Can you find your way about yet?”

  ‘I make progress’ said Vaalkiipaa, unsmiling: to whom it was perhaps not clear whether Sillery’s
question referred to discovery in the topographical sense or the more intimate interior examination with which Sillery had linked it. There was a silence, at the end of which Members put in, rather at random: ‘Sillers, it is too clever of you to buy a suit the same colour as your loose covers.’

  Quiggin sat sourly on the extreme edge of the sofa, glancing round the room like a fierce little animal, trapped by naturalists. He had accepted a rock-bun from Sillery, and for some minutes this occupied most of his attention. Honthorst said: ‘They tell me the prospects for the college boat are pretty good, Professor Sillery.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sillery, making a deprecatory gesture in our direction to suggest his own unworthiness of this style of address. ‘Good. Very good.’

  He said this with emphasis, though without in any way committing his opinion on the subject of current aquatics. It was evident that at present Quiggin was the guest who chiefly interested him. Stringham he must have regarded as already in his power because, although he smiled towards him in a friendly manner from time to time, he made no further effort to talk to him individually. Quiggin finished his rock-bun, closely watched by Sillery, picked some crumbs from his trousers, and from the carpet round him: afterwards throwing these carefully into the grate. Just as Quiggin had dealt with the last crumb, Members rose suddenly from the sofa and cast himself, with a startling bump, almost full length on the floor in front of the fireplace: exchanging in this manner his Boyhood-of-Raleigh posture for that of the Dying Gladiator. Sillery, whose back was turned, started violently, and Members pleaded: ‘You don’t mind, Sillers? I always lie on the floor.’