________________________________________________
_ But when at last I met Charles Strickland, it was under
circumstances which allowed me to do no more than just make
his acquaintance. One morning Mrs. Strickland sent me round a
note to say that she was giving a dinner-party that evening,
and one of her guests had failed her. She asked me to stop
the gap. She wrote:
"It's only decent to warn you that you will be bored to
extinction. It was a thoroughly dull party from the
beginning, but if you will come I shall be uncommonly grateful.
And you and I can have a little chat by ourselves."
It was only neighbourly to accept.
When Mrs. Strickland introduced me to her husband, he gave me
a rather indifferent hand to shake. Turning to him gaily,
she attempted a small jest.
"I asked him to show him that I really had a husband. I think
he was beginning to doubt it."
Strickland gave the polite little laugh with which people
acknowledge a facetiousness in which they see nothing funny,
but did not speak. New arrivals claimed my host's attention,
and I was left to myself. When at last we were all assembled,
waiting for dinner to be announced, I reflected, while I
chatted with the woman I had been asked to "take in," that
civilised man practises a strange ingenuity in wasting on
tedious exercises the brief span of his life. It was the kind
of party which makes you wonder why the hostess has troubled
to bid her guests, and why the guests have troubled to come.
There were ten people. They met with indifference, and would
part with relief. It was, of course, a purely social function.
The Stricklands "owed" dinners to a number of persons,
whom they took no interest in, and so had asked them;
these persons had accepted. Why? To avoid the tedium of
dining tete-a-tete, to give their servants a rest, because
there was no reason to refuse, because they were "owed" a dinner.
The dining-room was inconveniently crowded. There was a K.C.
and his wife, a Government official and his wife,
Mrs. Strickland's sister and her husband, Colonel MacAndrew,
and the wife of a Member of Parliament. It was because the Member
of Parliament found that he could not leave the House that I had
been invited. The respectability of the party was portentous.
The women were too nice to be well dressed, and
too sure of their position to be amusing. The men were solid.
There was about all of them an air of well-satisfied prosperity.
Everyone talked a little louder than natural in an instinctive
desire to make the party go, and there was a great deal of
noise in the room. But there was no general conversation.
Each one talked to his neighbour; to his neighbour on the
right during the soup, fish, and entree; to his neighbour on
the left during the roast, sweet, and savoury. They talked of
the political situation and of golf, of their children and the
latest play, of the pictures at the Royal Academy, of the
weather and their plans for the holidays. There was never a
pause, and the noise grew louder. Mrs. Strickland might
congratulate herself that her party was a success.
Her husband played his part with decorum. Perhaps he did not talk
very much, and I fancied there was towards the end a look of
fatigue in the faces of the women on either side of him.
They were finding him heavy. Once or twice Mrs. Strickland's eyes
rested on him somewhat anxiously.
At last she rose and shepherded the ladies out of one room.
Strickland shut the door behind her, and, moving to the other
end of the table, took his place between the K.C. and the
Government official. He passed round the port again and
handed us cigars. The K.C. remarked on the excellence of the
wine, and Strickland told us where he got it. We began to
chat about vintages and tobacco. The K.C. told us of a case
he was engaged in, and the Colonel talked about polo. I had
nothing to say and so sat silent, trying politely to show
interest in the conversation; and because I thought no one was
in the least concerned with me, examined Strickland at my
ease. He was bigger than I expected: I do not know why I had
imagined him slender and of insignificant appearance; in point
of fact he was broad and heavy, with large hands and feet, and
he wore his evening clothes clumsily. He gave you somewhat
the idea of a coachman dressed up for the occasion. He was a
man of forty, not good-looking, and yet not ugly, for his
features were rather good; but they were all a little larger
than life-size, and the effect was ungainly. He was clean
shaven, and his large face looked uncomfortably naked.
His hair was reddish, cut very short, and his eyes were small,
blue or grey. He looked commonplace. I no longer wondered
that Mrs. Strickland felt a certain embarrassment about him;
he was scarcely a credit to a woman who wanted to make herself
a position in the world of art and letters. It was obvious
that he had no social gifts, but these a man can do without;
he had no eccentricity even, to take him out of the common run;
he was just a good, dull, honest, plain man. One would
admire his excellent qualities, but avoid his company.
He was null. He was probably a worthy member of society, a good
husband and father, an honest broker; but there was no reason
to waste one's time over him. _
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