At Lady Molly's - Anthony Powell [29]
‘Never get that last bit right,’ he said… Nunc et in hora mortis nostras … always a shade flat on that high note in hora …’
He slowly shook his head, at the same time lowering himself into an arm-chair, while he straightened out his left leg with both hands as if modelling a piece of delicate sculpture. Evidently it was still rather painfully stiff. After achieving the best angle for comfort, he began to conduct through the air the strokes of an imaginary baton, at the same time allowing himself to hum under his breath:
‘Tum, tumtitty, tum-te-tum
Te-tum te-titty tum-tum-te-titty, tum-te-titty
Amen, A-a-a-a-ame-e-e-en …’
Mrs. Conyers, throughout these movements and sounds, all of which she completely ignored, could scarcely wait for the maid carrying the tea-tray to leave the room.
‘Too late to learn at my age, much too late,’ said the General. ‘But I go on trying. Never mind, I’m not getting on too badly with those arrangements of Saint-Saens.’
‘Aylmer, you remember I told you Nicholas knows Mr. Widmerpool?’
‘What, this Nicholas?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know the fellow who is going to marry Mildred?’
‘Yes.’
If Mrs. Conyers had already told her husband of my acquaintance with Widmerpool, the General had entirely forgotten about that piece of information, for it now came to him as something absolutely new, and, for some reason, excruciatingly funny, causing him to fall into an absolute paroxysm of deep, throaty guffaws, like the inextinguishable laughter of the Homeric gods on high Olympus, to whose characteristic faults and merits General Conyers’s own nature probably approximated closely enough. A twinge of pain in his leg brought this laughter to an end in a fit of coughing.
‘What sort of a fellow is he?’ he asked, speaking now more seriously. ‘We haven’t heard too satisfactory an account of him, have we, Bertha? Is he a good fellow? He’ll have his hands full with Mildred, you may be sure of that. Much younger than her, isn’t he?’
‘I was at school with him. He must be about—’
‘Nonsense,’ said the General. ‘You can’t have been at school with him. You must be thinking of someone else of that name—a younger brother, I expect.’
‘He is a year or two older than me—’
‘But you couldn’t have been at school with him. No, no, you couldn’t have been at school with him.’
Mrs. Conyers, too, now shook her head in support of her husband. This claim to have been at school with Widmerpool was something not to be credited. Like most people who have known someone as a child, they were unwilling to believe that I could possibly have arrived at an age to be reasonably regarded as an adult. To have ceased, very recently, to have been an undergraduate was probably about the furthest degree of maturity either of them would easily be inclined to concede. That Widmerpool’s name could be put forward as a contemporary of myself was obviously the worst shock the General had yet sustained on the subject. His earlier attitude suggested the whole affair to be one of those ludicrous incidents inseparable from anything to do with his wife’s family; but the news that he might be about to possess an additional brother-in-law more or less of an age with myself disturbed him more than a little. He began to frown angrily. ‘I met a young fellow called Truscott last week,’ he said.
‘There was a question of his coming on to a board from which I retired the other day. He is connected with the by-products of coal and said to have a good brain. I asked him if by any chance he knew Widmerpool—without divulging the nature of my interest, of course—and he spoke with the greatest dislike of him. The greatest dislike. It turned out they had been in Donners-Brebner together at one time. Truscott said Widmerpool was a terrible fellow. Couldn’t trust him an inch. Now that may be a pack of lies. I’ve never been in the habit of listening to gossip. Haven’t got time for it. Naturally I didn’t tell Truscott that, in case it made him dry up. Thought it my duty to hear whatever he had to get off his chest. I must say he produced a whole string of crimes to be laid at Widmerpool