Mr Deacon spoke archly, rather than angrily. It was clear from his manner that he liked, even admired Moreland, from whom he seemed prepared to accept more teasing than he would ever have allowed to most of his circle.
‘Anyway, the lad was not here when I arrived,’ he went on, briskly turning once more towards myself, ‘so I joined this little party of music-makers sitting by their desolate stream. I have been having some musical differences with Moreland here who becomes very dictatorial about his subject. I expect you know each other already. What? No? Then I must introduce you. This is Mr Jenkins – Mr Moreland, Mr Gossage, Mr Maclintick, Mr Carolo.’
The revolutionary bent of his political opinions had never modified the formality of Mr Deacon’s manners. His companions, on the other hand, with the exception of Gossage who gave a smirk, displayed no outward mark of conventional politeness. In fact none of the rest of them showed the smallest wish to meet anyone outside their own apparently charmed circle. All the same, I immediately liked something about Hugh Moreland. Although I had never seen him in Mr Deacon’s shop, nor in Barnby’s studio, I knew of him already as a figure of some standing in the musical world: composer: conductor: pianist: I was uncertain of his precise activities. Barnby, talking about Moreland, had spoken of incidental music for a semi-private venture (a film version of Lysistrata made in France) which Sir Magnus Donners had backed. Since music holds for me none of that hard, cold-blooded, almost mathematical pleasure I take in writing and painting, I could only guess roughly where Moreland’s work – enthusiastically received in some circles, heartily disliked in others – stood in relation to the other arts. In those days I had met no professional musicians. Later, when I ran across plenty of these through Moreland himself, I began to notice their special peculiarities, moral and physical. Several representative musical types were present, as it happened, that evening in addition to Moreland himself, Maclintick and Gossage being music critics, Carolo a violinist.
Only since knowing Barnby had I begun to frequent such society as was collected that night in the Mortimer, which, although it soon enough absorbed me, still at that time represented a world of high adventure. The hiatus between coming down from the university and finding a place for myself in London had comprised, with some bright spots, an eternity of boredom. I used to go out with unexciting former undergraduate acquaintances like Short (now a civil servant); less often with more dashing, if by then more remote, people like Peter Templer. Another friend, Charles Stringham, had recently risen from the earth to take me to Mrs Andriadis’s party, only to disappear again; but that night had nevertheless opened the road that led ultimately to the Mortimer: as Mr Deacon used to say of Barnby’s social activities, ‘the pilgrimage from the sawdust floor to the Aubusson carpet and back again’. At the time, of course, none of this took shape in my mind; no pattern was apparent of the kind eventually to emerge.
Moreland, like myself, was then in his early twenties. He was formed physically in a ‘musical’ mould, classical in type, with a massive, Beethoven-shaped head, high forehead, temples swelling outwards, eyes and nose somehow bunched together in a way to make him glare at times like a High Court judge about to pass sentence. On the other hand, his short, dark, curly hair recalled a dissipated cherub, a less aggressive, more intellectual version of Folly in Bronzino’s picture, rubicund and mischievous, as he threatens with a fusillade of rose petals the embrace of Venus and Cupid; while Time in the background, whiskered like the Emperor Franz-Josef, looms behind a blue curtain as if evasively vacating the bathroom. Moreland’s face in repose, in spite of this cherubic, humorous character, was not without melancholy too; his flush suggesting none of that riotously healthy physique enjoyed by Bronzino’s – and, I suppose, everyone else’s – Folly. Moreland had at first taken little notice of Mr Deacon’s introduction; now he suddenly caught my eye, and, laughing loudly, slapped the folded newspaper sharply on the table.
‘Tell us more about your young friend, Edgar,’ he said, still laughing and looking across at me. ‘What does he do for a living? Are we to understand that he wholly supports himself by finding junk at the Caledonian Market and vending it to connoisseurs of beauty like yourself?’
‘He has stage connexions, Moreland, since you are so inquisitive,’ said Mr Deacon, still speaking with accentuated primness. ‘He was trained to dance – as he quaintly puts it – “in panto”. Drury Lane was the peg upon which he hung his dreams. Now he dares to nourish wider ambitions. I am told, by the way, that the good old-fashioned harlequinade which I used so much to enjoy as a small boy has become a thing of the past. This lad would have made a charming Harlequin. Another theatrical friend of mine – rather a naughty young man – knows this child and thinks highly of his talent.’
‘Why is your other friend naughty?’
‘You ask too many questions, Moreland.’
‘But I am intrigued to know, Edgar. We all are.’
‘I call him naughty for many reasons,’ said Mr Deacon, giving a long-drawn sigh, ‘not the least of them because some years ago at a party he introduced me to an Italian, a youth whose sole claim to distinction was his alleged profession of gondolier, who turned out merely to have worked for a short time as ticket-collector on the vaporetto. A delightfully witty pleasantry, no doubt.’
There was some laughter at this anecdote, in which Maclintick did not join. Indeed, Maclintick had been listening to the course of conversation with unconcealed distaste. It was clear that he approved neither of Mr Deacon himself, nor of the suggestions implicit in Moreland’s badinage. Like Moreland, Maclintick belonged to the solidly built musical type, a physical heaviness already threatening obesity in early middle age. Broad-shouldered, yet somehow narrowing towards his lower extremities, his frontal elevation gave the impression of a large triangular kite about to float away into the sky upon the fumes of Irish whiskey, which, even above the endemic odours of the Mortimer and the superimposed insistence of Mr Deacon’s eucalyptus, freely emanated from the quarter in which he sat. Maclintick’s calculatedly humdrum appearance, although shabby, seemed aimed at concealing bohemian affiliations.
The minute circular lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles, set across the nose of a pug dog, made one think of caricatures of Thackeray or President Thiers, imposing upon him the air of a bad-tempered doctor. Maclintick, as I discovered in due course, was indeed bad-tempered, his manner habitually grumpy and disapproving, even with Moreland, to whom he was devoted; a congenital lack of amiability he appeared perpetually, though quite unsuccessfully, attempting to combat with copious draughts of Irish whiskey, a drink always lauded by him to the disadvantage of Scotch.
‘I should be careful what you handle from the Caledonian Market, Deacon,’ Maclintick said, ‘I’m told stolen goods often drift up there. I don’t expect you want a stiff sentence for receiving.’
He spoke for the first time since I had been sitting at the table, uttering the words in a high, caustic voice.
‘Nonsense, Maclintick, nonsense,’ said Mr Deacon shortly.
His tone made obvious that any dislike felt by Maclintick for himself – a sentiment not much concealed – was on his own side heartily reciprocated.
‘Are you suggesting our friend Deacon is really a “fence”?’ asked Gossage giggling, as if coy to admit knowledge of even this comparatively unexotic piece of thieves’ jargon. ‘I am sure he is nothing of the sort. Why, would you have us take him for a kind of modern Fagin?’