“I absolutely decline your assistance, Warden.” It was uncomfortably plain that Tandon spoke in a flare of anger. “Quail will give me a hand, and I shall be perfectly all right. I apologise for spoiling your shot, or stroke, or whatever it be called.”
“Not at all, my dear chap.” Jopling remained infuriatingly cordial. “Bring him to the club-house, Quail, and we’ll have some tea. Capital stuff for restoring nervous tone. Tandon, are you a crumpet man? I’m afraid I forget. But you look like a crumpet man.”
At this point Jopling fortunately withdrew. Tandon got to his feet without much difficulty. He continued to be in pain, but he was not, in fact, disabled. He stooped and picked up his haversack. “I’ll never forgive him,” he said.
Quail was startled. The whole episode had continued to suggest itself to him as ludicrous, like something in a comic strip. “Oh, I guess he feels a bit of a fool,” he said diplomatically. “It was because of that, I think, that he took it rather lightly.”
“An atrocious calculated assault!”
“My dear man!” This time Quail was almost scared. “It certainly couldn’t be that. A golf-club isn’t a weapon of precision. It was careless of him to play, no doubt; and he may even have indulged himself in the impulse to alarm us a little. But I’m sure he didn’t intend to hit you.”
“You don’t know the man.” Tandon was now limping forward. “I made a most improper observation,” he said presently.
Quail looked at him in surprise. “To Jopling?”
“No, no—to yourself, in declaring that I would never forgive him.”
“Your irritation is very natural. I shouldn’t give it another thought.”
“There remains this question of a cup of tea. In the circumstances, the proposal is exceedingly disagreeable to me. Nevertheless, I think I ought to accept it. The man is the head of our society, after all. And I have quite recently lunched at his wife’s table. Yes, I think I must accept . . . what did he mean, I wonder, by saying that I look like a crumpet man?”
Quail felt once more that Tandon was perpetually on the hover between the admirable and the absurd. At the same time, he felt a recurrence of alarm. Tandon might well be capable of brooding over the crumpet problem until it became a monstrous cryptogram. “It was a mere pleasantry,” he said. “He simply meant to be friendly.”
“There used to be muffin men. They went about with bells. Would there be anything in that?” Tandon gave Quail his sudden suspicious glance.
“Nothing at all. He meant nothing at all.”
“And isn’t there a rhyme? ‘If a man who crumpets cries, cries not when his father dies’ . . . would it be that?”
Quail laughed. “No, no—that’s turnips, not crumpets. It’s Dr Johnson. Don’t you remember?”
Tandon came to a halt. “So it is,” he said. “So it is.” For a couple of minutes he remained silent. They were now quite near the club-house. Suddenly Tandon spoke in his huskiest voice. “Quail,” he said, “are you ever under any apprehension of madness?”
“Dear me, yes. Everybody feels at one time or another that they may go mad.”
“At times I am conscious of a certain peculiarity about my own mental processes. I have sometimes thought that intellectual labour conduces to an over-solitary life. And of course it is sedentary – very sedentary. That is why I have always been careful to take these healthful country walks.”
“I think you are very wise.”
“It enables one to maintain a sense of proportion. Take this matter of Jopling – of his being determined to wreck our work on Fontaney. It is important to keep a sense of proportion about that.”
Quail had a momentary feeling of helplessness. Tandon’s healthful walks appeared to proceed rigidly on straight lines. But the movement of his mind was at times distressingly circular. Quail could believe that Jopling derived amusement from mildly bating his Senior Tutor. But he still didn’t believe that Jopling took any real interest in Arthur Fontaney.
CHAPTER VI
It might have been expected that there would be a fourth at tea. But Jopling’s opponent appeared to have been a young man whom he had summarily dismissed, and there was at once no doubt about the subject on which he proposed to converse with his two guests. It was still what might be termed the nuisance-value of the Fontaney situation that he was moved to exploit – so, at least, Quail remained convinced – and at this he went heartily to work before the promised crumpets were on the table.
“I was so glad, Tandon, that you were able to come to lunch with my two ladies from the wilds of North Oxford. Dear souls, didn’t you think? The elder is a little formidable, but I’m certain you made a great impression on her.”
Tandon – who must have known very well that he had done nothing of the sort – remained silent. His tea-spoon scraped in an irritating way against the bottom of his cup as he stirred. And his rigid body rocked gently, like a toy designed to balance on a perch.
“Both young Michael Manningtree and yourself pleased her very much.” Jopling turned to Quail. “You’ve met our young Lord Michael? A kinsman of my wife’s.”
Quail shook his head. “I haven’t met him. I believe he’s a kinsman of Miss Fontaney’s as well.”
“To be sure – and of course you know all about Fontaney. Tandon, Quail is the authority, is he not? But then you yourself are interested as well. Yes, yes—I know all about it. Rival sleuths on the trail—eh? The battle of the Bradmore Road? Yes, indeed, all being fair in love and war. But don’t let it worry you, Tandon; don’t let it weigh upon your mind. It doesn’t do to get hag-ridden by a learned project, my dear fellow. I’ve known men go badly off the rails that way. Cunningham, you remember, who drowned himself; and Redmain, who swallowed something; and that quiet chap – a clergyman, I’m sorry to say – who carved up the boot-boy.”
How much of this was mere insensitive banter, and how much was the product of positive malign principle in Jopling, Quail felt it wouldn’t be easy to say. And Tandon again made no response, but raised his cup and rather hastily gulped tea.
“You’re in a hurry, I’m afraid. No doubt you’re teaching at five. When I was a tutor, I always taught at five – a capital hour. How are your present lot of pupils, my dear chap? How do you get along with them?”
“Very well, thank you.” If a husky voice can snap, Tandon’s snapped. “They are a thoroughly conscientious and industrious group of young men, I am glad to say. They are not here because they have relations in the peerage, Warden. But, on the other hand, none of them is without at least a modicum of brains.”
“Capital, capital – I am glad to hear it. But don’t set too much store on your pupils. It’s a great mistake.” Jopling put down his cup, and Quail knew at once that the tips of his fingers were going to come softly together. “For if they’re bad, you know, they bore you at once, and if they’re good, they bite you later on.”
It didn’t seem to worry Jopling that this melancholy little epigram fell into silence. He parted his fingers again, decided to wipe them on his silk handkerchief, and then turned from the crumpets to the cakes. Quail, who felt that he hadn’t himself, so far, contributed quite what he ought to the smooth conduct of this awkward party, began to talk on impersonal topics. He propounded opinions and he required replies. He wasn’t unaccustomed to set a tone at need, and as he had grown mountingly impatient of the near-buffoonery which had characterised almost the whole of the afternoon’s proceedings, he did so with some astringency now. It amused him, rather, that the two men almost at once changed their tune – so that he might have been a nannie, he thought, practised in executing a resolve that her young charges should behave themselves. When Tandon rose to go, Jopling with perfect civility proposed that both men should return to Oxford in his car.
But Tandon declined – and his tone was stiff again. “Thank you, but I have ordered a taxi. I ventured, Warden, to ask your club servant here to order a taxi. In this muddy state, I don’t propose further to impose upon yo
u. But of course you will take Quail back.”
This, to Quail, didn’t seem quite in order. He had set out with Tandon, and with Tandon he ought to return. He took it, therefore, that the proposal was a normal product of the Senior Tutor’s social ineptitude. “Not a bit,” he said. “I’ll hope to ride with the Warden another time. But this has been our expedition, and I think we’ll share the cab.”
“I know that you and the Warden have things to talk about.” Tandon had risen. “You have a joke to share, I’ve no doubt – and more serious matters to arrange as well. I won’t detain you.”
Here was a new pitch of absurdity, and for a moment it left Quail without a word. He stared at Tandon, and saw that he was actually executing his most uncouth bow. It had to be acknowledged that, in fits and starts at least, the man was capable of believing anything. He might believe that the golf-course had been a sort of booby-trap, and that Quail himself had been suborned to lead him into Jopling’s line of fire. He was certainly in process – it came to Quail like a revelation – of building up a picture in which Quail and Jopling were covertly forming a common front for operations against the Bradmore Road. At the moment, it wasn’t a matter to argue about. To do so before Jopling would be only to expose Tandon the more. The reasonable course was to get him cheerfully into his cab, and then think again.
“We’ll just have another cup of tea.” Jopling had sat down again comfortably. “A capital chap Tandon – as I think I assured you when he first cropped up in our conversation. But, of course, he hasn’t very much extension of view. No help when it comes to running the place – no help at all.”
“I should have thought that, as Senior Tutor, he would do an excellent job.”
“Oh—that. Yes, indeed. No doubt he sees to it that the young men give some attention to their studies. I wouldn’t say that Tandon isn’t a very useful man on that side. But it wouldn’t occur to him that a college has bills to pay.”
“That’s certainly important.” College presidents being a race by no means unknown to him in his own country, Quail at once had a very sufficient prevision of the line Jopling was about to pursue. That it had been a line utterly untouched on when he had lunched at the Lodge; that the Warden had then betrayed not the slightest consciousness that Quail was other than the most insignificant wanderer: this he must now agree with Robin Warboys to represent the operation of a sort of primitive academic guile. “I’ve no doubt,” he said pleasantly, “that there are bills to pay.”
“At present we’re selling some of our poorer agricultural land. A college, as you know, is a charity, and has been since Queen Elizabeth’s time. It can’t, as a landowner under such conditions, compete with the fellow who has to pay income-tax – and who wants to pay as little surtax as possible. You follow me?”
Quail suppressed a smile. “I guess I understand so much,” he said gravely.
“So we are looking about. My own idea has been more high-class urban property. But our enquiries have been very disappointing. There just isn’t much about.”
“Aren’t you largely in equities now, as well as gilt edged?”
“Certainly. But the home markets seem to be very limited—very limited, indeed. I’ll tell you frankly, my dear Quail, what I have in mind. The college ought to take powers to invest much more overseas. And particularly in America – buying, of course, on the London markets. Do you think you could help us there?”
Quail felt he certainly could help. He didn’t at all care for the present Warden of his college, and he couldn’t but reflect that this approach was coming at the end of a thoroughly displeasing afternoon. But these were facts he must judge irrelevant to the matter in hand, and he was just about to give a round assurance of interest when Jopling rather surprised him by hurrying on.
“Of course, we’d like to do something in return for any help we got. I’d like to do something myself. Could you eat another of these cakes?”
“Thank you, no. I’ve had an excellent tea.”
“Did I tell you that my wife and I went to tea the other day in the Bradmore Road?”
“I don’t think you mentioned it, Warden.” There was, Quail saw, nothing casual in this change of subject. It looked as if the oddest of poor Tandon’s suspicions were to have some basis in fact, after all. Jopling was really proposing to use the Fontaney ladies and their treasures as a counter in some obscure bargain.
“I know that you and Tandon are both interested in Arthur Fontaney’s journals, and so forth. And, from what I’ve heard of them lately, I’m inclined to think I should find them pretty interesting myself.”
“I’m delighted to hear it.” Quail allowed himself to be bland. “I had no idea, Warden, that you made a study of aesthetic criticism and theory. I’d have thought that theology and jurisprudence between them would give you a tolerably busy time.”
“Capital, capital!” Jopling took this mild shaft as an admirable witticism. “But I gather that these journals have another side. They would be of great value to anyone interested in—um—the personal side of Oxford life round about the turn of the century.”
“Fontaney certainly went about a great deal. And he had a keen eye and a mordant wit. For what it’s worth, there’s certainly a tremendous store of anecdote in the journals. I have, you know, begun going over them.”
“Precisely. And I am delighted that the old lady should have made them available to you.”
“And Tandon, I’m glad to say, is giving a hand.”
“Is that so?” This appeared to be news to Jopling – and not news of any welcome order. “Well, that’s excellent. But that sort of access isn’t exactly all that’s wanted—eh?”
“It’s quite as much, Warden, as one is entitled to seek. Anything further must be left to Miss Fontaney, you’ll agree.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” Jopling gave his most leonine nod. “But she’s hard up, you know.”
Quail was silent for a moment. “I wouldn’t myself care to dangle money at her. I can see that she has strong feelings about her father’s papers, and so on.”
“I can tell you that she has strong feelings about Tandon. She wouldn’t, if she could help it, hand the stuff over to him. I’m surprised she’s even let him have a look at them.”
“It was on my application and recommendation.”
There was a moment’s silence. Quail could see that Jopling was a little put out by this. He was feeling that there must be something very deep in it, to which it was necessary to penetrate. “Of course, I tried to give Tandon a leg up with her myself,” he presently said. “My wife had them to lunch together, as you know. My wife has always been very kind to Tandon, and tried to bring him in to this and that. But he’s difficult. There’s no doubt he’s difficult. And the old lady isn’t struck on him. May I proceed to something rather delicate?”
Quail had so little fancy for this that he received it with no more than a blank face. But Jopling wasn’t deterred.
“I mean, of course, how the old lady—and should I say her sister?—feels about yourself.”
“It’s interesting, Warden, that you should feel able to report on that. But I’m decidedly not inviting you to do so.”
“My dear fellow, I quite understand you. It’s delicate, as I say. And the substance of the matter is that Miss Fontaney has a high regard for you – personally, that is.”
Quail was silent.
“And as a scholar, I need hardly say. I gather that she is capable, within limits, of understanding her father’s stuff – which, of course, isn’t true of the younger lady, bless her. And she admires your book. I think it may be said that they both admire your book . . . have you tried out whether you have any pull in the fact of her mother’s nationality?”
Here was a fair question, and Quail answered it. “In a cautious way, yes. Miss Fontaney has a strong sense of family, I found; and I thought it legitimate to remind her that my own family and her mother’s had lived side by side for the better part of two centuries, and that
there had been plenty of marriages. But she wasn’t greatly interested. Miss Marianne was, but she wasn’t. It didn’t touch her imagination at all. I think her mother means comparatively little to her.”
“Just so.” Jopling appeared to feel that comfortable progress was being made. “If you ask me, Miss Fontaney doesn’t greatly care for the thought of anything going to America.”
“It’s a view to respect.”
Jopling gave his most robust laugh. “My dear Quail, it’s nothing but a vagary of mind that we must get around as we can.”
“I see. And you think you could help to get round it?”
“I think I could. Being head of a house is nothing so grand, you know, once one comes south of, say, Keble Road. I’m a bit of a dog’s-body, I assure you, across that line.” Jopling lent this a great effect of humour. “But there’s still a wonderful prestige attached to being a Warden or whatever, as soon as you get among our elderly friends in North Oxford. And I have a feeling that Miss Fontaney would listen to me. Yes, I think that if you and I went into partnership, much could be done.”
Quail was silent at least long enough to convey some lack of enthusiasm for this proposition. And in fact, of course, he disliked it very much. Jopling’s interest in Fontaney, if it had any genuine existence at all, was thoroughly frivolous; it seemed prompted by the notion that access to the journals would provide materials for enhancing his own reputation as an Oxford raconteur. But even this wasn’t the truth; certainly wasn’t the whole truth. What Quail had rather suspected before was now pretty well incontrovertible. What would really amuse Jopling would be first to intensify Tandon’s already obsessive interest in the journals and then to ensure that he should be cheated of them. To devote time to such a project seemed futile as well as vicious; and Quail took leave to doubt the validity of Jopling’s basic assumption, which was that he could gain some ascendancy over Miss Fontaney that Quail himself would never manage. The whole idea of collaring the old lady wasn’t pleasing; in fact, her failing health made it repugnant. But if it was a matter of rational persuasion to responsible ends, Quail ventured to think that he might himself pull as much weight as another man. And furthermore the core of Jopling’s proposition – that Quail in his present quest should be assured of Jopling’s good offices in return for expert assistance with a new investment policy for the college – this was most offensive to Quail for the simple reason that he would never have thought to do other than give freely what Jopling would make the subject of an unseemly bargain. All this being so, Quail concluded that, here and now, he’d better be quite clear.
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