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 _tête-à-tête_,
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.