Death in the dusk — A Closer Reading

Next was Lord Ludlow. “I’ve seen him,” remarked his Lordship, gazing at me with a little asperity, crinkling the skin over the high-pitched bridge of his nose, and sat down, for he was wishful of continuing the game, or of giving the impression that such was his desire.

I was whisked to the second table and made acquainted with the sole woman there. Eve Bartholomew (God give her peace!) grasped my hand for a tug or two, exclaiming hurriedly, “Oh, how do you do?” And she added, with ill-feigned casualness, “They say you’ve been out on the hills to-day. You’re sure you haven’t seen Sir Brooke?”

“Quite sure, Mrs. Bartholomew.”

“Or hear of anyone who might be him—he?”

Next I was set face-to-face with her partner, the red-faced young man, who I was not surprised to learn was Sean Cosgrove. His head was large, his features large, too, without being lubberly. The ruddiness of his complexion was accentuated by his very black and shining hair, short and thick. There was something grim and settled in the line of his jaw, and his blazing black eyes bore out the character of determination. He shook hands unsmiling, gravely.

“My congratulations,” I offered.

He gave a short bow, looking at the floor. Then, “I have heard of you,” he said, with not a trace of Irish lilt or accent in his speech.

“You are a searcher for the buried lore of antiquity. Is not that so?” he asked with a certain lofty seriousness.

“I have done a little research among the British saints, but I hardly expected my labours—”

“They honour you,” asserted Cosgrove, but my smile of deprecation and anything further he was about to say were cut off by Pendleton, who relentlessly kept me on the go, and I faced the next guest.

Two men had been partners at this table; I now found myself staring at a waxed moustache, and a very elegantly tapered and needle-pointed specimen of craftsmanship it was. The rest of his face was nothing remarkable, only a little swarthy-purplish with brandy, and a trifle stary-eyed. I was not prepossessed with this gentleman, judging him to be the sort who shows his cleverness to an assorted public in quips to barmaids and dance-hall musicians. His name, “Mr. Charlton Oxford,” struck me as strainedly aristocratic, though no fault of his.

“Aesthete,” flashed through my brain, but a query-note raised itself after the word. “Just plain fool,” I concluded.

“You _are_ being bandied about, aren’t you?”

I was surprised by the fluence and ease of his voice, and his lightening smile, the big darkish man’s who had been dealing the cards so ritualistically a few minutes before. He lifted his weight as if it were that of a bubble, and I saw that indeed he was big, bearing his torso on stanchion-legs. His mass must have been twice mine.

“Gilbert Maryvale, our complete man of business—iron-castings,” said Pendleton, with evident gladness that his tale was over.

I saw a quick brightness come and go in Gilbert Maryvale’s eyes at that description, as if the eyeball had darted out a little from its station under thatch-brows.

“The winner of the Newman Prize for Lucid Prose, I think, in—let me see—Nineteen-nineteen? May I congratulate you, Mr. Bannerlee, although the time is past? I have read your ‘Poets of Enervation’ with delight.”

“No, Mr. Maryvale, that was not my essay.”

“Surely I haven’t mistaken the name?”

“You have mistaken only the man. ‘Poets of Enervation’ was the overflow of my cousin Norval’s pen. We were in the University together. I made a bid for the Newman myself, but was buried. Norval and I are often mistaken for each other, even in our literary occupations.”

“No doubt you ran him close,” observed the big man twinkingly.

“I’m afraid not. And now, as Mr. Cosgrove has said, I am devoted to dustier things, and the prose I give my time to is far from lucid.”

“But you wring lucidity out of it.”

Maryvale resumed his seat, picked up his hand, as did the rest, for in spite of much invitation I insisted on remaining aloof from the game. Broad capable cheek-bones, sudden forceful chin he had, but I had an awareness there was much more than capability and force in this “complete man of business.” That allusion to the Prize Essay for Lucid Prose was a poser. Was there another trafficker in iron-castings in the United Kingdom who had read “Poets of Enervation”?—or one who would speak of it kindly if he had?