A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [82]
We were presented, one by one, to Prince Theodoric, who wore a grey flannel suit, unreservedly continental in cut, and appeared far more at his ease than at Mrs. Andriadis’s party: smiling in a most engaging manner when he shook hands. He spoke that scrupulously correct English, characteristic of certain foreign royalties, that confers on the language a smoothness and flexibility quite alien to the manner in which English people themselves talk. There was a word from him for everyone. Sir Gavin seized his hand as if he were meeting a long lost son, while Prince Theodoric himself seemed, on his side, equally pleased at their reunion. Lady Walpole-Wilson, probably because she remembered Prince Theodoric only as a boy, showed in her eye apparent surprise at finding him so grown-up. Only Eleanor’s, and her aunt’s firmly-clasped lips and stiff curtsey suggested entire disapproval.
Further introductions took place. The Huntercombes were there—Lord Huntercombe was Lord Lieutenant of the county—and there were a crowd of persons whose identities, as a whole, I failed to assimilate; though here and there was recognisable an occasional notability like Sir Horrocks Rusby, whose name I remembered Widmerpool mentioning on some occasions, who had not so long before achieved a good deal of prominence in the newspapers as counsel in the Derwentwater divorce case. I also noticed Mrs. Wentworth—whom Sir Horrocks had probably cross-questioned in the witness-box—still looking rather sulky, as she stood in one of the groups about us. When the formalities of these opening moves of the game had been completed, and we had been given cocktails, Stringham strolled across the room. His face was deeply burned by the sun. I wondered whether this was the result of the Deauville trip, of which Mrs. Andriadis had spoken, or if, on the contrary, division between them had been final. He had not wholly lost his appearance of fatigue.
“You must inspect my future wife,” he said at once.
This announcement of imminent marriage was a complete surprise. Barnby had said, during the course of the evening we had spent together: “When people think they are never further from marriage, they are often, in reality, never nearer to it,” but that kind of precept takes time to learn. I had certainly accepted the implication that nothing was more distant than marriage from Stringham’s intentions when he had so violently abandoned Mrs. Andriadis’s house; although now I even wondered whether he could have decided to repair matters by making Mrs, Andriadis herself his wife. To be able to consider this a possibility showed, I suppose, in its grasp of potentialities, an advance on my own part of which I should have been incapable earlier in the year. However, without further developing the news, he led me, to the girl from whose side he had come, who was still talking to Truscott.
“Peggy,” he said, “this is an old friend of mine.”
Apart from former signs given by Stringham’s behaviour, external evidence had been supplied, indirectly by Anne Stepney, and directly by Rosie Manasch, to the effect that anything like an engagement was “off.” Peggy Stepney, whom I now recognised from pictures I had seen of her, was not unlike her sister, with hair of the same faintly-reddish shade, though here, instead of a suggestion of disorder, the elder sister looked as if she might just have stepped gracefully from the cover of a fashion magazine; “too perfect,” indeed, as Sir Gavin might have said. She was, of course, a “beauty,” and possessed a kind of cold symmetry, very taking, and at the same time a little alarming. However,