It looked as if Quail’s morning would drag. But the mail brought a batch of business documents which somebody had decided must be referred to him, and he worked steadily till lunch-time. There was always satisfaction in getting a surprising lot done without either a stenographer beside him or a contrivance on the table into which to drone, and it was only with the half-pint of bitter in which he indulged as crown to his labours that his mind emerged again upon the Oxford scene. After his meal he took a turn round Christ Church Meadow – a resource, he reflected, that must have tranquilised a good many men facing occasions considerably more momentous than his. All in all, he contrived to make his eventual walk north in very tolerable nervous trim.
Miss Fontaney was alone, although it was some seconds before he could be sure of this, so much did the drawing-room lie in shadow. Lowered blinds and half-drawn curtains shut out all but a few rays of the clear afternoon sunshine; and the effect created in the gloom by the answering gleam, here and there, of some old warm glowing thing in tapestry or porcelain or enamel was just that of such a treasure-filled cavern as a dragon might fitly guard. He thought at first that the light must be excluded in the interest of preserving all this. Arthur Fontaney hadn’t, like poor Ruskin, kept his pictures behind little curtains; but it might be all in character that his daughter Eleanor carried her curatorship to lengths of this sort. Then he remembered that Marianne had received him here with nothing of such a crepuscular effect, and on this followed the realisation that what Eleanor was keeping the light from was not the surrounding assemblage of material objects but herself.
And as he shook hands his perception went further. It was astonishing that she had been lunching in Oxford the day before, and not at all surprising that her younger sister had betrayed serious anxiety about her health. Eleanor Fontaney was a sick woman; she was this much more noticeably than she was an elderly one. She had been cast in a physical mould larger than Marianne’s. But it seemed to Quail that if the sisters were tipped into a pair of scales they would be roughly in a state of equipoise, and neither of them at all likely to strain the machinery. Marianne had never filled out, and Eleanor had shrunk in upon herself in a manner wholly ominous.
Her greetings were of a kind to which her note of invitation had already given a clue, being devoted largely to a correct degree of curiosity on the prosperousness or otherwise of his recent voyage, and hopes that he was now finding pleasant entertainment in a society more active than she was at present herself able to mingle with. As he satisfied her in these regards and proceeded to conventional enquiries of his own, what was chiefly striking him was her voice. It covered an abnormally wide scale without ever dropping to a normal pitch, so that he found himself recalling the distressing little instruments upon which imaginative children fondly suppose that they can imitate the calls of birds. Moreover, when Miss Fontaney ceased speaking – and it was often on her highest note – her lips, as if rehearsing further observations, oddly continued to move, and it was thus hard not to believe that her voice had simply passed beyond the scope of a human ear, like one of those apparently mute and futile whistles that are instantly attended to by dogs.
Her features, as he became able more clearly to distinguish them, revealed themselves as not at all like Marianne’s. In fact, they were not Fontaney features at all. They did, however, stir some memory in Quail, and at once he knew what it was. On the whole, American women have been slower than American men in evolving a range of national types. But some are not so much evolving as becoming obsolete. And what Quail saw in Eleanor were sundry indefinable signs recalling a species of august lady already vanishing from New York when he was a boy. There could be no doubt that Arthur Fontaney’s elder daughter took after her mother. Quail hoped there was something promising in this.
“I have sent Marianne out for a walk, but on the understanding that she will not be too late to see you.” At its almost alpine height, Miss Fontaney’s voice delivered itself with cultivated precision. Its tone conjured up a Marianne of decidedly less than her present years, and seemed to approximate Quail’s call to that of a music- master or a visiting dentist. “Marianne has too few opportunities, at present, of struggling against a disabling diffidence. It is my wish to bring her forward.”
On this frigid pronouncement Miss Fontaney paused; or at least through her moving lips nothing more was to be heard. Quail said that he had found Miss Marianne entirely agreeable.
“I am glad to think my sister does her best. She must soon, after all, have heavier duties to discharge.”
Quail supposed this to refer to the control of family business upon the elder sister’s death. But as it was just possible that its intended application was to no more than some impending elevation in the hierarchy of Brown Owls, he thought it safest to say nothing.
“I am conscious of having permitted Marianne to live too much retired. Our dear father’s memory has been paramount with her, and a great part of her energies have gone into keeping in a worthy condition such poor memorials of him as we possess.”
Quail murmured something to the effect that this was highly pious and proper. But he remembered that Marianne herself didn’t seem much disposed to talk in this strain, and he had his doubts about nature having given her any overpowering slant that way. Miss Fontaney was now making tea – it was a ritual involving concentration upon various silver utensils and a spirit lamp – so that he allowed himself one of his glances about the room. It lost nothing on a further approach towards familiarity. Yet he was not quite sure that he liked it as much as he had done.
And certainly he didn’t want it. He wanted the journals tremendously – in fact, far more than ever – but in this room he would be quite glad to see an auctioneer with a hammer. And if that happened – as, after all, it might – he would himself bid only for an isolated object here and there. This was a change of mind; even a change of heart. But Quail wasn’t disconcerted. When such changes glimmered up, the great thing was to distinguish and acknowledge them. To keep Arthur Fontaney’s things magnificently and comprehensively together for all time was a grand idea – or it was that until you saw them with another generation of human beings camped among them. Massed here, they were dangerous. Massed in a museum, they would be dead. Scattered, they would gain more in life than they would lose from the disruption of their present exquisitely harmonious organisation. For scores of people to have something of Fontaney’s—he saw it!—was really the thing.
It was about the greatest satisfaction in Willard Quail’s life – and in business he had achieved it again and again – to penetrate through a long-cherished bad idea to a suddenly apprehended good one. If this had been business he would have had his cheque-book – metaphorically, at least – out before him in a twinkling, and be offering Miss Fontaney a round sum for the whole collection – with the sole object, now, not of preserving it but of scattering it judiciously among the deserving. Not that this idea was, after all, tip-top, since the deserving would deserve yet better if they could be induced to come along with modest cheque-books of their own. He decided that if Miss Fontaney died – and he suspected this to be pretty well her proximate intention – he would briskly advise Marianne to pack up everything and despatch it to the best London sale-room. On the proceeds, without a doubt, she could treat herself to a very sufficient little nook at Hove – conceivably with a paddling pool plumb opposite.
“And of late, I fear that Marianne has gone out even less than formerly.” Miss Fontaney had arrived at a critical moment. She was delicately warming each cup in turn, and then pouring a single drop of water into the corresponding saucer. “She requires my support, if even quite simple social occasions are not to be a trial to her. And in recent weeks I have been almost confined to the house. That, as you know, is why I failed Lady Elizabeth. Yesterday, it is true, I managed to attend a luncheon party – but that was a matter less of social duty than of business . . . sugar?”
Quail watched Miss Fontaney’s filigree sugar-tongs poised over the Crown Derby. Her physical emaciation was extreme; but she was not, as the young people said, past it. She was aware that there was a situation, and she believed herself to be in control of it. Probably she was. Quail now suspected – and it must have been intuitively, since no real ground had as yet appeared – that somewhere in Miss Fontaney there harboured a strong streak of eccentricity. North Oxford was probably as rich in what might be called crypto-eccentrics as the university was in those, such as old Dr Stringfellow, whose eccentricity was more or less extensively on view. Miss Fontaney was very far from being, in Robin Warboys’ phrase, round the bend. But, sooner or later, something not easy to regard as wholly rational was going to appear in her. And already she wasn’t all that easy to converse with. Ought he to challenge her on this statement that she had gone to the Joplings’ on business? This was a difficult question – which meant that it was of an order that Quail had a trick of answering rapidly. “Business?” he echoed easily as he took his cup. “Are you thinking of doing business with Warden Jopling?”
Miss Fontaney was now peering into a silver kettle that hung over a little blue flame on a sort of high tripod at her side. Had she begun to murmur an incantation, Quail would not have been altogether surprised. But all she did was to reply to his question without any appearance of being disconcerted. “Dear me, no. The Warden was simply acting as intermediary. He persuaded Mrs Jopling to give the luncheon. Mrs Jopling is a very amiable woman.” Miss Fontaney paused as if to give this a second thought. “That is to say, she is well connected. One would suppose her origins to be plebeian, but in fact they are not.”
Quail didn’t manage any reply to this. It was a sort of talk that he had never got on easy terms with. And it would be depressing if simple snobbery turned out to be the mainspring of Arthur Fontaney’s elder daughter. Yet this was, he saw, a more substantial statistical probability than was that of her being slightly crazed. Often you had to give the English their head in snob-talk for a while; in some strange way it gave them confidence, and afterwards they might become quite interesting. About Miss Fontaney, however, he wasn’t sure; what buzzed in her bonnet was perhaps not quite the common bee. Meanwhile, something had to be said, and Quail thought he would press on to what, after all, they must eventually come to. “I hope,” he asked, “that the introduction the Joplings effected turned out to be satisfactory?”
“It was necessary that I should take a good look at somebody.” Miss Fontaney paused and then, rather unexpectedly, laughed. It was a faint high laughter that faded rapidly, so that one thought of a flock of screeching exotic birds, far away and vanishing into a jungle. “As it is necessary, of course, that I should take a good look at you.”
Quail was rather pleased with this, which promised at least discussion more direct than he had altogether dared to hope for. “Certainly,” he said, “you must do that. I realise that you have difficult decisions to make. I have suggestions, if you should happen to ask for them. But I don’t want to press any one solution upon you, believe me.”
“I ought to say, frankly, that there is a great deal of work which I had hoped to undertake myself. But I did not feel at liberty to begin even a private ordering of my father’s papers during the period in which it was his wish that they should be laid entirely aside. Now, when that period has elapsed, I know that my remaining strength will permit me to do very little.”
Quail made to this what reply he could. And he added a question. “Would Miss Marianne be interested in work of that sort?”
“Marianne is not capable of it. I have done my best with her. But her interests are not intellectual. Everything will, of course, go to her. But our major problem does not admit of solution that way.”
“That is a great pity.” Quail was silent for a moment. His instinct for negotiation was of necessity very highly developed, and he was aware that there was a sense in which he was getting along swimmingly. But it was a sense requiring definition. He knew that he was a long way from any point at which he could bring that cheque-book from his pocket. What had happened – it suddenly came to him – was that Miss Fontaney had at once admitted him to an altogether surprising degree of confidence. She hadn’t, it was true, said a great deal. But her inclination would overpoweringly be to say virtually nothing at all. Essentially, she didn’t go in for snobbery. She went in for pride. One facet of that – and a crucial one – might be family pride, which wasn’t the same thing as snobbery by a long way. For one thing, it conduces to reserve rather than to august communication. And Miss Fontaney was certainly still reserved. Nevertheless, she had accepted him as somebody with whom discussions must be held. “Do you feel,” he asked, “that some sort of major decision is urgent—I mean about your father’s journals, and so on? Ought the first step not to be a general survey of what there is, undertaken either entirely by yourself, or by yourself and somebody qualified to assist?”
At first Miss Fontaney’s only response to this was to hold out her hand for his cup. He was now convinced that she was an intelligent woman, who would take the technique of the conference table in her stride. And her next remark, indeed, made it clear that she knew when a major card must be exposed. “There is a financial aspect, Mr Quail. I wish to see it clarified before Marianne is left alone in the world.”
“I can understand that.” Quail’s respect for Miss Fontaney was growing. “So take those journals of your father’s. Would you be happy to see them published to-morrow?”
“That is impossible to say. They must be examined with great care.”
“I entirely agree. Of course you know that you can part with them – sell them – as physical objects, and still prohibit publication, if you want to, for the better part of another twenty years?”
“That has been explained to me. I had it in mind yesterday.”
Quail was puzzled. “When you were having a good look at somebody?”
“Precisely. Unfortunately, the result of the luncheon was most unsatisfactory.”
“I’m sorry to hear it.” Quail said this sincerely enough. The idea of Tandon’s being put on show for Jopling’s amusement, and on a calculation that he would expose himself to Miss Fontaney in an unfavourable light, was now even more disagreeable to Quail than it had been before. “And, also, Miss Fontaney, I’m a little surprised. I’d have thought you were meeting a pretty good man. A little limited, perhaps, on some sides. But with the root of the matter in him.”
“Unfortunately I cannot agree.” Miss Fontaney’s voice soared even more than usual by way of giving emphasis to this. “And, by the way, Mr Quail, I am reminded of a slight slip, or at least an omission, in your book. I once had it in my mind to write to you about it. You neglect our connection with that family.”
Quail was now quite at sea. “I shall be most grateful for any correction,” he said. “But I guess I’m being a bit stupid. I just don’t know what family you mean.”
“My paternal great-grandmother, Mr Quail, was a Manningtree. It should certainly have been mentioned.”
“A Manningtree?” The odd truth burst on Quail. “It was Lord Michael Manningtree you went to the Joplings’ to have a look at?”
“But certainly. Can I have failed to make myself clear? It appeared to me that if the young man had the requisite talents and interests he would be a highly proper person to have charge of the journals – which are, after all, family papers, Mr Quail – and edit them suitably in the fullness of time. It occurred to me, too, that the proposal might interest the Marquis, who might be prepared to make a suitable monetary arrangement by way of putting such an opportunity in his younger brother’s possession.”
“I see.” Here was Miss Fontaney’s vein of craziness opening out with a vengeance. The Fontaneys’ connection with the Manningtrees, which Quail did now vaguely remember, was as tenuous as Mrs Jopling’s must be. And the young man whom Miss Fontaney had been considering adopting as a sort of family historian had gone away and, for the amusement of a number of young men in a common room, described her sister and herself in a grossly disrespectful image. Quail’s indignation was tempered by the perception that the situation had its comic side. “But Gavin Tandon?” he said. “I think you met Tandon too?”
“Tandon?” Miss Fontaney was blank.
“He also lunched with the Joplings.”
“Oh, yes – the other guest. I recall him. A well-informed person, but a little tedious. A fellow of the college, no doubt.”
“Tandon takes a keen and scholarly interest in your father’s work. That’s why he was there.”
“I had supposed there must be some reason.” Miss Fontaney spoke tartly, and Quail was forced to conclude that she had disliked the Senior Tutor. “I judged him to be of the aggressively celibate type – such as still exists, you know, in the colleges. A negative attitude to women in general, and a positive distaste for women of education. This Mr Tandon was awkward in our presence; and he attempted to make himself agreeable by conversation that was a little too sustained and a little too heavy. I lost several of the Warden’s stories – the Warden, as you know, tells a very good story – because Mr Tandon had thought of some fresh information that he thought I ought to possess. Mrs Jopling told me afterwards that it is a regular thing with him.”
“I am sure that he would have wished to show great respect.” Quail was determined to do his best for his rival. “I believe that it would give him great pleasure to be allowed to call.”
Miss Fontaney frowned. “If he has a serious interest in my father’s work he ought, living in Oxford, to have put himself into communication with me.”
“He would feel some delicacy about doing so during the period in which the journals were to be unexamined – just, my dear Miss Fontaney, as I have done myself.”
“In that case, he may certainly call.” Miss Fontaney announced this decision with some majesty. “But I wonder what has become of Marianne? I had her promise that she should have returned by five o’clock. Still, another five minutes to ourselves will be convenient, since I have something particular to say.”
Quail put down his cup. “You can’t believe I’m not eager to hear you,” he said.
“I ought to mention that one or two casual remarks of the Warden’s yesterday made me a little uneasy. He was inclined to dwell on a possible aspect of my father’s unpublished work that I had not myself given much thought to. It may be called the anecdotal aspect.”
Quail nodded. “It’s been in my own mind,” he said, “during the last few days, as it happens. I’m not sure that Jopling mightn’t give it more importance than it deserves.”
“I am inclined to agree with you. But I should not wish the journals to pass in any degree out of my control and then to be made injudicious use of, whether in that or any other regard. In short, Mr Quail, I consider that the time has come to act. You have perhaps a few weeks to spare?”
“I have, indeed.”
“Then you would greatly oblige me by examining the journals and other papers. If, indeed, it is not asking too much of you.”
“My dear Miss Fontaney, I regard it as the greatest honour that could be accorded me.” Quail found that he didn’t at all mind thus coming in as a sort of second string to the disappointing Lord Michael Manningtree. The plain fact was that things were going swimmingly with him still. And he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had been absolutely fair to Tandon as well.
“Then that is very satisfactory. I need say nothing, Mr Quail, about the entire confidence in which I know that you will proceed in the matter. Let us aim first at gaining fuller information on what we have to deal with. My decision on how eventually to dispose of the journals may wait on that.” Miss Fontaney extinguished the little blue flame beneath her kettle, as if in symbolical assurance that some significant stage in the negotiation was over. “And now, I think we had better go into the library.”
But it was at this moment that the door opened and Marianne Fontaney entered the room.
“I am so sorry, Eleanor, to be late.” Although she must have expected Quail’s presence, Marianne had hesitated on seeing him, and for a moment hung back like a doubting child. Now she advanced and shook hands. He thought that her complexion had improved, and remembered that she had presumably just returned from the open air.
“It is much beyond your time, certainly,” Miss Fontaney said, and poured her sister a cup of tea. “But Mr Quail and I have had a very useful talk. Mr Quail, who has so much expert knowledge, will examine the journals.”
“The journals?” Marianne, perhaps because she was candidly occupied in discovering whether there was anything left to eat, seemed for a second to be quite vague about this. “Oh—I am so glad. Do you know, Eleanor, we saw both the Nicolsons’ little girls?”
“Did you, Marianne?” Miss Fontaney, although looking at her younger sister with what Quail supposed to be affection, had insinuated into her high-pitched voice an irony not pleasant to hear. “That must have been delightful. But Mr Quail, who doesn’t know the Nicolsons, can hardly make a great deal of it.”
“Of course not.” He could see that Marianne had flushed, and that she was searching confusedly for some intellectually more distinguished topic. “Are you interested in folk-dancing, Mr Quail?” she presently tried.
“I’m afraid I haven’t had much opportunity of seeing it. But a couple of years ago, in the Tyrol . . .” Quail was determined to do his best. But as his recollection of what he proposed to describe was tenuous, he felt relieved, if also a little surprised, when Miss Fontaney rather brusquely interrupted him.
“Did you say we, Marianne? You have been walking with a friend?”
“Yes, Eleanor. I was joined by a gentleman. Or rather, I joined him. But I don’t know that Mr Quail will make a great deal of that either.” Marianne’s low voice was entirely grave. Nevertheless, Quail remembered his former suspicion that in this dim and desiccated lady a disturbing ghost of humour lurked. “It was quite a new acquaintance.” She turned to Quail. “A guest we met at Mrs Jopling’s yesterday.”
“My dear Marianne – how very odd!” Miss Fontaney, who had been consulting the inside of her teapot, looked sharply at her sister. “You mean to say that Lord Michael—’
“Of course not, Eleanor.” Marianne was so amused by this that she laughed aloud. “It wasn’t that horrible boy. It was the elderly man.” She paused. “Don’t you remember? The nice one. Mr Tandon.”
It didn’t seem an exciting announcement, but the little silence that followed lent it almost an air of drama. Quail certainly saw that it held one mildly disconcerting possibility. “Did you meet Tandon,” he asked, “just over the way?”
“Yes—how did you know? When I went out, I had a letter to post. So I crossed straight over. And there he was. He was standing quite still, so I suppose he had lost his way. We recognised each other simultaneously. It was slightly embarrassing.” Marianne Fontaney nervously took up her teacup. “One never knows—does one?—about somebody one has simply met in the house of an acquaintance. I don’t even know if there’s a rule about it. Eleanor, is there a rule?”
Miss Fontaney appeared to consider this judicially. “It would be proper,” she said, “to acknowledge a bow. But I should hardly suppose, Marianne, that there was any need to approach the gentleman and suggest a walk.”
“Of course it wasn’t like that at all.” Marianne glanced swiftly at Quail, but he couldn’t tell whether it was in mischief or apology. “We spoke – and Mr Tandon was very awkward. I’m sure he just wanted to get away. But you know how that feeling makes it positively more difficult to break off? He asked me – I’m sure because it was all that came into his head – whether I was setting out on a walk. And when I said yes, he seemed to feel he must offer to come along – I suppose the right term would be to escort me. We went right round the Parks. Of course it was most absurd. I think Mr Tandon must be very shy. He kept on glaring into the far distance. I thought of those paintings of besieged soldiers, staring out over the desert in the hope that they may be relieved. How terrible it would have been if I’d laughed. And I did want to laugh – just once or twice.”
Miss Fontaney frowned. “I hope, Marianne, that between these impulses of hilarity, you contrived to make rational conversation.”
“Well, Mr Tandon did. He explained mathematics.”
“You astonish us.” Miss Fontaney’s patience with the simple mind of her sister could be felt as limited.
“I had said how difficult it was to keep accounts. And he said that mathematics was intensely interesting. He said it wasn’t his subject, but that he sometimes looked into it. Some of the facts he mentioned were so curious that I think I can remember them – although I didn’t of course really follow him. There are things called unprovable theorems, and if you can prove the unprovability of one of these then you are involved in considerations of logic. Did you know that, Eleanor?” As Marianne asked this question she glanced once more at Quail; and he was once more disturbed by the sense that one couldn’t quite know where one was with her. “And then there is something about maps.” Marianne hadn’t waited for a reply.
“It seems that however many countries there were in the world, and however complicated their frontiers were, you would never need more than four paints in your paint-box in order to give each country a colour without the same colours ever meeting along a frontier. It was just something that the people who make maps discovered. They found they never needed to use a fifth colour. And it seems that nobody knows why. There are mathematicians who spend their lives trying to work out why the map people just require four. And they haven’t succeeded yet. Isn’t that extremely interesting?”
Miss Fontaney was looking less interested than puzzled. Quail guessed that it was quite a long time since Marianne had had anything like so much to say. And now something prompted him to ask a question himself. “Did Mr Tandon get on to the subject of your father and his writings?”
Marianne was surprised. “Oh, no! He showed no inclination to talk about anything like that. Do you know what I think? That he had quite forgotten who I was—or even that I was a woman.”
Quail smiled. “I hardly think he could do that.”
She flushed faintly, and he realised with satisfaction that he had given her a tiny start of pleasure. “But yes! I think he sometimes walks about with pupils – clever young men, who will understand about the considerations of logic . . . but I did understand about the maps.” Marianne put down her cup and looked at it in a puzzled way, as if aware that she had been inconsequent. “But what I was saying was this: that he just forgot I wasn’t one of those suitable young men, whom he could help to prepare for an examination. And so he went on talking. Wasn’t it rather absurd? Or do you think, Eleanor, that I did wrong?”
“I don’t think that you would be likely to do wrong.” Miss Fontaney produced this with what, to Quail, was a rather moving mingling of warmth and exasperation. “And now I am going to take Mr Quail into the library. Mr Quail will be coming to work here regularly during the next few weeks.”
“Then we must try to make him comfortable.”
It had been an eminently sensible reply on Marianne’s part. But as he left the room Quail discovered, rather to his surprise, that he would have preferred to hear even a perfectly conventional expression of pleasure at Miss Fontaney’s news.