A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell Read Free Book Online

about, rather aimlessly, in the heat; Stringham and Templer having wished to proceed in opposite directions. Passing the police-station, which we had finally reached without yet deciding on a line of march, Stringham had paused to read the posters pasted up outside: where, among a collection of notices referring to lost dogs, stolen jewellery, and foot-and-mouth disease, was reproduced the likeness of a man wanted for fraud. He was called ‘Braddock alias Thorne’, and his portrait showed oneof those blurred, nondescript countenances, familiar in advertisements depicting persons who testify that patent medicine has banished their uric acid, or that application of some more efficacious remedy has enabled them to dispense with the use of a truss. The writing under the picture said that Braddock alias Thorne (who seemed to have committed an unusually large number of petty offences) was a man of respectable appearance, probably dressed in a black suit. The description was hardly borne out by what could be resolved from the photograph, which showed a bald, middle-aged criminal in spectacles, who looked capable of any enormity. Stringham remarked that the picture resembled President Woodrow Wilson. Templer said: ‘It is much more like Le Bas.’
    ‘More of a poet,’ said Stringham, who loved to emphasise this side of Le Bas’s personality; and had indeed built up a picture of his housemaster as a man whose every spare moment was spent in scribbling verses with the help of a rhyming dictionary. He said: ‘There is a touch of distinction about Braddock alias Thorne, and absolutely none about Le Bas.’
    ‘Must we spend the whole afternoon reading this stuff?’ said Templer. ‘It is about as interesting as the house notice-board. Let’s go somewhere where I can have my pipe. There is no point in trudging about the town on Sunday.’
    And so we turned about towards the fields, passing the house again, and entering an area of dusty cow-parsley and parched meadows. While still on the road the figure of Widmerpool appeared in front of us. He was tramping along in the sunlight, swinging arms and legs like an automaton of which the mechanism might be slightly out of order. We walked behind him for a time, Stringham doing an imitation of the way Widmerpool put his feet tothe ground. From an unreasoning fear of the embarrassment that would be caused me if Widmerpool should look back and himself observe Stringham’s agitated pantomime, I persuaded him to stop this improvisation. I had remained in some odd manner interested in Widmerpool since that night in the fog; and, although Stringham’s imitation was ludicrously exact, to think that Widmerpool might see it was for some reason painful to me; though I was almost sorry when the time came to turn off the road and leave Widmerpool to disappear in a distant cloud of dust.
    ‘I don’t know what I should do without Widmerpool,’ Stringham said. ‘He keeps me young.’
    ‘I sometimes wonder whether he is a human being at all,’ Templer said. ‘He certainly doesn’t move like one.’
    We passed beyond the railway line to pasture, where Templer lit up his horrible, stubby pipe, and argued as we walked along about the age of the Dolly Sisters, one of whom Stringham held to be the mother of the other. The sun was too hot to make our way straight across the grass, so that we moved along by hedges, where there was some little shade. Templer was still vigorously contesting Stringham’s theory of relationship, when we came through some trees and faced a low bank, covered with undergrowth, which stood between us and the next field. The road was by this time fairly far away. Stringham and Templer now ceased to discuss the Dolly Sisters, and both took a run at this obstacle. Stringham got over first, disappearing down the far side: from which a sort of cry, or exclamation, sounded. As Templer came to the top of the mound of grass, I noticed him snatch his pipe from his mouth and jump. I