The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [248]
Poxe brightened.
“Of course, the value of the penny has, since that time, markedly decreased, but calculating it as nearly as one can in days of rather haphazard accountancy, the Dean and I decided that the fine must have valued about thirteen shillings.
“I need hardly say, Lord Poxe, that this whole matter has been acutely distressing to the Dean and myself. We hope and trust that it will not occur again. It is probable that in the event of a second offence, the College would find itself unable to treat the matter with the same generosity. Thank you, Lord Poxe.”
And thus the interview closed and Poxe went out, elated, to celebrate his escape in the manner which most immediately suggested itself to him; and Edward, in his fire-blackened room, felt that everything was turning out well.
Without difficulty, an aged and dissolute doctor was unearthed in St. Ebbs, where he lodged in squalor with one of the College servants, and earned an irregular livelihood by performing operations in North Oxford; this sorry man was persuaded to write a certificate of death from natural causes. The funeral was brief and ill attended. The Warden toiled for three days in the composition of a Greek epitaph and on the third evening persuaded the Dean to write one in Latin. And so for Poxe and Edward the matter ended.
One thing I feel should be added. It is merely an incident that may be of no significance but which may explain much that seems improbable. I was told it in an intimate moment by Anne, who is married to the Warden, and of whom many stories are told. This is what she said, that on the night when Mr. Curtis died, she ran in a high state of emotion to her husband, the Warden, and cried, “Oh why, why did you kill him? I never really loved him.”
She stopped, seeing the Dean there also. He, a gentleman, rose to go, but the Warden detained him. And then Anne, falling on her knees, pounded out a tale of the most monstrous and unsuspected transactions between herself and Mr. Curtis.
“Supposing there were a trial,” asked the Warden, “could this be kept a secret?”
The Dean doubted gravely whether this would be possible.
And then came to the Warden the full realization of the imperishable obligations of precedent, the memory of the head of the Bursar, the appreciation of the greatness of families not unconnected with his own.
“At least, I think it must have been then,” Anne said as she turned up the light.
FRAGMENTS:
THEY DINE WITH THE PAST
Almost the first thing which Toby said to me when we met was, “Imogen is in London again.”
Even to Toby to whom this could never mean as much as to the rest of us, it seemed the only thing of immediate importance; to me, more than as pleasure or pain, though, of course, it was both of these, it came as a breaking away of near memories.
For some moment of time the bar where we stood was frozen in space; the handles, the slopped wood, the pallid man beyond them lost perspective; “If you like our beer tell your friends; if you don’t tell us” stood as cut in stone, the ordainment of priest kings, immeasurably long ago; the three years or a little more that stood between now and that grim evening in April fell, unhonoured, into the remote past and there was no sound from the street.
Then, instantly almost, the machine fell to its work again and I said as though nothing had intervened between his voice and mine:
“Was she with him?”
For even now, after three years or more, I could not easily say his name; I spoke of him, as slatternly servants will speak of their master, impersonally. And indeed it was thus I thought of him; the name was an insignificant thing labelling an event. Toby understood something of this as anyone who had known Imogen, must have understood, even he; for he was associated with much that was wholly alien to him; he had been in Adelphi Terrace in that strange evening in April