Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - Anthony Powell [80]
‘Much, much easier, Tuffy,’ he said. ‘But who am I to be given a life of ease?
Not for ever by still waters
Would we idly rest and stay …
I feel just like the hymn. Tonight I must take the hard road that leads to pleasure.’
‘We could give this lady a lift home too, if she liked,’ said Miss Weedon.
She glanced at Mrs Maclintick as if prepared to accept the conveyance of her body at whatever the cost. It was a handsome offer on Miss Weedon’s part, a very handsome offer. No just person could have denied that.
‘But I am not much in the mood for going home, Tuffy,’ said Stringham, ‘and I am not sure that Mrs Maclintick is either, in spite of her protests to the contrary. We are young. We want to see life. We feel we ought not to limit our experience to musical parties, however edifying.’
There was a short pause.
‘If only I had known this, Charles,’ said Miss Weedon.
She spoke sadly, almost as if she were deprecating her own powers of dominion, trying to minimise them because their very hugeness embarrassed her; like the dictator of some absolutist state who assures journalists that his most imperative decrees have to take an outwardly parliamentary form.
‘If only I had known,’ she said, ‘I could have brought your notecase. It was lying on the table in your room.’
Stringham laughed outright.
‘Correct, as usual, Tuffy,’ he said.
‘I happened to notice it.’
‘Money,’ said Stringham. ‘It is always the answer.’
‘But even if I had brought it, you would have been much wiser not to stay up late.’
‘Even if you had brought it, Tuffy,’ said Stringham, ‘the situation would remain unaltered, because there is no money in it.’
He turned to Mrs Maclintick.
‘Little Bo-Peep,’ he said, ‘I fear our jaunt is off. We shall have to visit Dicky Umfraville’s club, or the Bag of Nails, some other night.’
He made a movement to show he was ready to follow Miss Weedon.
‘I didn’t want to drag you away,’ she said, ‘but I thought it might save trouble as I happen to have the car with me.’
‘Certainly it would,’ said Stringham. ‘Save a lot of trouble. Limitless trouble. Untold trouble. I will bid you all good night.’
After that, Miss Weedon had him out of the house in a matter of seconds. There was the faintest suspicion of a reel as he followed her through the door. Apart from that scarcely perceptible lurch, Stringham’s physical removal was in general accomplished by her with such speed and efficiency that probably no one but myself recognised this trifling display of unsteadiness on his feet. The moral tactics were concealed almost equally successfully until the following day, when they became plain to me. The fact was, of course, that Stringham was kept without money; or at least on that particular evening Miss Weedon had seen to it that he had no more money on him than enabled buying the number of drinks that had brought him to his mother’s house. He must have lost his nerve as to the efficacy of his powers of cashing a cheque; perhaps no longer possessed a cheque-book. Otherwise, he would undoubtedly have proceeded with the enterprise set on foot. Possibly fatigue, too, stimulated by the sight of Miss Weedon, had played a part in evaporating desire to paint the town red in the company of Mrs Maclintick; perhaps in the end Stringham was inwardly willing to ‘go quietly’. That was the most likely of all. While these things had been happening, Moreland and Priscilla slipped away. I found myself alone with Mrs Maclintick.
‘Who was she, I should like to know,’ said Mrs Maclintick. ‘Not that I wanted all that to go wherever it was he wanted to take me. Not in the least. It was just that he was so pressing. But what a funny sort of fellow he is. I didn’t see why that old girl should butt in. Is she one of his aunts?’
I was absolved from need to explain about Miss Weedon to Mrs Maclintick,