At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [68]
I, too, remembered the incident; and also the look of adoration Miss Weedon had given Stringham when she entered the room. I well recalled that passionate glance, although even then—that night at the Jeavonses’—I had not yet guessed the depths of her devotion. I wondered what she did with herself now. Stringham, when last we had seen something of each other, had told me: ‘Tuffy has come into a little money,’ and that she was no longer his mother’s secretary. I found in due course that Miss Weedon was a close friend of Molly’s; in fact that she re-enacted at the Jeavonses’ many of her former duties when in the employment of Mrs. Foxe, although, of course, in a household organised on very different terms. It was impossible to know from her manner how unexpected, or the reverse, she found the fact that we had met again at this place. In her profound, though mysterious, dimness, she was typical of the background of Jeavons gatherings.
‘I always regret that Charles ever made that journey to Kenya.’ she said.
She spoke severely, as if I had myself been in part to blame for allowing such a thing ever to have taken place; even though at the same time she freely forgave me for such former thoughtlessness.
‘Why?’
‘He was never the same afterwards.’
I had to admit to myself there was some truth in that. Stringham had never been the same after Kenya. It had been a water-shed in his life.
‘Perhaps it was just because he became a man,’ she said. ‘Of course, his upbringing was impossible—always, from the beginning. But he changed so much after that trip to Africa. He was a boy when he went—and such a charming boy—and he really came back a man.’
‘People do grow up. At least some do.’
‘I am afraid Charles was not one of them,’ she said gravely. ‘He became a man, but he did not grow up. He is not grown up now.’
I hardly knew what to answer. It was one of those headfirst dives into generalisation that usually precedes between two persons a greater conversational intimacy. However, Miss Weedon made no attempt to expand her statement; nor, so to speak, to draw closer in her approach to the problem of Stringham. She merely continued to look at me with a kind of chilly amiability; as if, by making an immediate confession that I was a former friend of his, I had, so far as she was concerned, just managed to save my bacon. When a boy, I had regarded her as decidedly formidable. I still found her a trifle alarming. She gave an impression of complete singleness of purpose: the impression of a person who could make herself very disagreeable if thwarted.
‘Do you ever see Charles now?’ I asked.
She did not answer at once, as if waiting a second or two in order to make up her mind how best to deal with that question; perhaps trying to decide the relative merits of plain statement and diplomatic evasion. Finally she came down on the side of bluntness.
‘Yes, I do see him,’ she said. ‘Quite often. You probably know he drinks too much—really much too much. I am trying to help him about that.’
She stared at me very composedly. Once more I hardly knew how to reply. I had not expected our conversation to take this unreservedly serious turn; especially as we had by then reached the bedroom, and were only delayed in our introduction to the ape by the concourse of people who surrounded him, offering homage and applauding Molly’s particularisation of his many charms of character.
‘Charles had certainly had rather too much the last time I saw him,’ I said, trying to pass off the matter of Stringham’s drunkenness as if it were just a question of getting rather tight once in a way, which I knew to be far from the truth. ‘That was at a dinner he and I went to—two or three years ago at least.’
‘You have not seen him since then?’
‘No.’
‘It still goes on. But I think I shall be able to help him.’
I had no clear idea of how she would set about ‘helping’ Stringham, but the way she spoke made me conscious of her undoubted