• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3098 0

sitting at the oval-ended table between Barbara and Anne Stepney, the second of whom was on Sir Gavin’s right. The Walpole-Wilsons defied prevailing mode by still employing a table-cloth, a preference of Sir Gavin’s, who prided himself on combining in his own home tastes of “the old school” with a progressive point of view in worldly matters. The scented geranium leaf usually to be found floating in the finger-bowls could be attributed to his wife’s leaning towards a more exotic way of life. Beyond Barbara was Archie Gilbert, probably placed on Lady Walpole-Wilson’s left to make up for having Tompsitt—or rather an empty chair, where in due course he would sit, if he had not forgotten the invitation—on her right. Tompsitt, a protégé of Sir Gavin’s, was not greatly liked either by Eleanor or her mother.

This chasm left by Tompsitt divided Margaret Budd, who had Widmerpool on her other side, from her hostess. Widmerpool’s precise channel of invitation to the house was still obscure, and the fact that he himself seemed on the whole surprised to find himself dining there made his presence even more a matter for speculation. He had been placed next to Eleanor, who had presumably been consulted on the subject of seating accommodation at the dinner table, though he seemed by his manner towards her to know her only slightly, while she herself showed signs, familiar to me from observing her behaviour on past occasions, of indifference, if not dislike, for his company. Barbara had been the only member of the party greeted by him as an old acquaintance, though she had done no more than wring him rather warmly by the hand when she arrived, quickly passing on to someone else, at which he had looked discouraged. Pardoe sat between Eleanor and Miss Manasch—who brought the party round once more to Sir Gavin. The table had perhaps not been easy to arrange. Its complications of seating must have posed problems that accounted for Lady Walpole-Wilson’s more than usually agitated state.

“There does not seem any substantial agreement yet on the subject of the Haig statue,” said Widmerpool, as he unfolded his napkin. “Did you read St. John Clarke’s letter?”

He spoke to Eleanor, though he had glanced round the table as if hoping for a larger audience to hear his views on the matter. The subject, as it happened, was one upon which I knew Eleanor to hold decided opinions, and was therefore a question to be avoided, unless driven to conversational extremities, as she much preferred statement to discussion. The fact of broaching it was yet another indication that Widmerpool could not have seen a great deal of her at all recently.

“Surely they can find someone to carve a horse that looks like a horse.”

She spoke with truculence even at the outset.

“The question, to my mind,” said Widmerpool, “is whether a statue is, in reality, an appropriate form of recognition for public services in modern times.”

“Don’t you think great men ought to be honoured?” Eleanor asked, rather tensely. “I do.”

She clenched her lips tightly together as if prepared to contest the point to die death—with Widmerpool or anyone else.

“Nobody—least of all myself—denies the desirability of honouring great men,” he said in return, rather sharply, “but some people think the traffic problem—already severe enough in all conscience—might be adversely affected if any more space is taken up by monuments in busy thoroughfares.”

“I can’t see why they can’t make a model of a real horse,” said Barbara. “Couldn’t they do it in plaster of Paris or something. Don’t you think?”

This last question, propitiatory in tone, and addressed in a fairly low voice to myself, could still make me feel, for reasons quite subjective in origin, that there might be something to be said for this unconventional method of solving what had become almost the chief enigma of contemporary aesthetic.

“Need there be a horse?” asked Lady Walpole-Wilson, putting a brave face on the discussion, though evidently well aware, even apart from Eleanor’s potential pronouncements on the subject, of its manifold dangers.