A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [26]
However, when it became clear that Eleanor did not much like him, I found myself, I hardly knew why, assuring her that Widmerpool, at school and in France, had always been quite an amiable eccentric; though I could not explain, then or now, why I felt his defence a duty; still less why I should have arbitrarily attributed to him what was, after all, an almost wholly imaginary personality, in fact one in many respects far from accurate. At that time I still had very little idea of Widmerpool’s true character: neither its qualities nor defects.
“They had a small house on the Pembringham estate while experimenting with the manure,” said Eleanor. “Aunt Constance is frightfully kind, when she isn’t feeling too ill, you know, and used to ask them over quite often. That was where I first met him. Now his mother has taken a cottage near us at Hinton. Barbara doesn’t mind Mr. Widmerpool. Of course, she has often met him. I don’t really care for him very much. We were absolutely at our wits’ end for a man to-night, so he had to come. Have you ever seen his mother?”
I did not hear Eleanor’s views on Mrs. Widmerpool, because at that moment the music ceased; and, after clapping had died down and couples round us dispersed, the subject of Widmerpool and his family was quickly forgotten.
The ball took its course: dance-tune following dance-tune: partner following partner. From time to time, throughout the course of the evening, I saw Widmerpool ploughing his way round the room, as if rowing a dinghy in rough water, while he talked energetically to girls more often than not unknown to me; though chosen, no doubt, with the care devoted by him to any principle in which he was interested. He did not, as it happened, appear to be dancing much with any member of the Walpole-Wilson dinner-party, perhaps regarding them, when considered as individuals, as unlikely to lead to much that he could personally turn to profit. Later on in the evening, while sitting out with Miss Manasch, I was suddenly made aware of him again when he stumbled over her foot on his way upstairs.
“I know who he is!” she said, when he had apologised and disappeared from sight with his partner. “He is the Frog Footman. He ought to be in livery. Has he danced with Anne yet?”
“Anne Stepney?”
“They would be so funny together.”
“Is she a friend of yours?”
“We were at the same finishing school in Paris.”
“They didn’t do much finishing on her, surely?”
“She is so determined to take a different line from that very glamorous sister of hers.”
“Is Peggy Stepney glamorous?”
“You must have seen pictures of her.”
“A friend of mine called Charles Stringham used to talk about her.”
“Oh, yes—Charles Stringham,” said Miss Manasch. “That has been over a long time. I think he is rather a fast young man, isn’t he? I seem to have heard.”
She laughed, and rolled her beady little eyes, straightening her frock over plump, well-shaped little legs. She looked quite out of place in this setting; intended by nature to dance veiled, or, perhaps, unveiled, before the throne of some Oriental potentate—possibly one of those exacting rulers to whom Sir Gavin’s well-mannered diplomatists of the past might have appealed—or occupying herself behind the scenes in all the appetising labyrinth of harem intrigue. There existed the faintest suspicion of blue hairs upon her upper hp, giving her the look of a beauty of the Byronic era.
“Anne Stepney said he was pompous. As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen him for ages.”
“Anne thinks Charles Stringham pompous, does she?” said Miss Manasch, laughing again quietly to herself.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know him. At least only by reputation. I have met his mother, who is, of course, too wonderful. They say she is getting rather tired of Commander Foxe and thinking of having another divorce. Charles was more or less engaged to Anne’s sister, Peggy, at one stage, as I suppose you know. That’s off now, as I said. I hear about Peggy occasionally from