A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [75]
He continued with a stream 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 cheekbones, 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