A Question of Upbringing - Anthony Powell [19]
“I hope you weren’t smoking, Widmerpool,” said Templer.
Widmerpool ignored this interpolation, and went on: “Then I noticed that there was a policeman making across the field towards Le Bas. When the policeman – a big, fat fellow – reached Le Bas he seemed to begin reading something from a note-book. Anyway, Le Bas looked very surprised at first. Then he began to get up. I suppose he must have caught his foot in something, because he stumbled. Evidently the policeman thought he was going to try and escape.”
“What happened when he stumbled?” asked Stringham.
“The policeman took his arm.”
“Did he handcuff him?”
“No – but he grabbed him rather roughly.”
“What did Le Bas say?”
“I couldn’t hear. It looked as if he were making an awful fuss. You know the way he stutters when he is angry.”
“And so the policeman led him off?”
“What could he have done?” said Widmerpool, who seemed utterly overwhelmed at the idea that his housemaster should have been arrested.
Stringham asked: “Did anyone else see this?”
“A soldier and a girl appeared from a ditch and watched them go off together.”
“Did Le Bas notice you?”
“I kept behind the hedge. I didn’t want to get mixed up with anything awkward.”
“That was wise of you, Widmerpool,” said Stringham. “Have you told anyone what you saw?”
“Only F. F. Fletcher and Calthorpe Major. I met them on the way back. What can Le Bas have done?”
“Do you mean to tell me you don’t know?” said Stringham.
Widmerpool looked taken aback. His breathing had become less heavy while he unburdened himself of his story. Now once more it began to sound like an engine warming up.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I don’t mean anything,” said Stringham, “except that I am not particularly surprised.”
“But tell me what you think it is.”
Widmerpool spoke almost beseechingly.
“Now look here, Widmerpool,” said Stringham, “I am awfully sorry. If you have never noticed for yourself anything about our housemaster, it is hardly my place to tell you. You are higher up in the house than I am. You have to shoulder a certain amount of additional responsibility on that account. It is not for me to spread scandals in advance. I fear that we shall all be reading about Le Bas quite soon enough in the papers.”
We left Widmerpool on the steps of the house: to all intents and purposes, a fish recently hauled from the water, making powerful though failing efforts at respiration.
“That boy will be the death of me,” said Stringham, as J: we walked quickly together up the road.
Most of the crowd who paced up and down by the chapel, passing backwards and forwards over the cobbles, while masters tried to herd them into the building, already knew something of Le Bas’s arrest: though only Calthorpe Major, armed with advanced information from Widmerpool, seemed yet to have had time to write home on the subject. “I sat straight down and sent off a letter to my people about Le Bas having been removed to prison at last,” Calthorpe Major was saying. “They never liked him. He got his Leander the same time as my father. I’ve promised to let them know further details as soon as I can get them.” He moved on, repeating the story to friends who had not yet heard the news. Stringham, too, pushed his way I through the mob of boys, collecting versions of the scene that had taken place. These were many in number. The bell quickened its ring and stopped with a kind of explosion of sound as the clock began to strike the hour. We were swept up the steps. Stringham said: “I am afraid it was all in rather doubtful taste. In some ways I regret having been concerned in it. One is such a creature of impulse.”
Although the air under the high vault struck almost chill after the warmth outside in the yard, the evening sun I streamed through the windows of the chapel. Rows of boys, fidgeting but silent, provoked, as always, an atmosphere of expectancy before the service began. The voluntary droned quietly for a time, gradually swelling into a bellow: then stopped with a jerk, and began again more gently: remaining for a time at this muted level of sound. Emotional intensity seemed to meet and mingle with an air of indifference, even of cruelty within these ancient walls. Youth and Time here had made, as it were, some compromise. Le Bas came in late, just before the choir, and strode unsteadily towards his stall under the high neo-gothic canopy of carved wood. He looked discomposed. The surface of his skull was red and shining, and, more than once, he seemed to mutter to himself.
Cobberton, another housemaster, and a parson, through gold-rimmed spectacles looked across from the far side of the aisle, lips tigh