O How The Wheel Becomes It! by Anthony Powell

Author:Anthony Powell [Powell, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446427248
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2015-03-11T23:00:00+00:00

12

Afterwards, weeks afterwards, Shadbold saw the second fatal blunder had now been committed. The first had been to have anything whatsoever to do with the Winterwade Diary. Once the truth of Isolde Upjohn’s physical reincarnation had sunk into his consciousness as an established fact his first inclination had been, by a show of patent lack of enthusiasm, to prevent—at worst postpone—this invasion until such time as might allow due consideration of the probabilities her irruption might portend. That reaction on his part had been hopelessly inadequate. Her pertinacity should have been answered without hesitation by a statement that he was leaving the house at that very moment, and (like Captain Oates thought Shalbold) could not say for certain when he would be returning. In retrospect he never quite decided why he had acted with such weakness and indecision. There had unquestionably been mitigating circumstances. Just as he had been curious to see the Winterwade Diary, he had been curious to set eyes again on an old flame. He was also prepared to admit to himself that he was not unwilling to exhibit to her gaze as presentable a façade as could reasonably be attained without too much effort. There seemed no obvious risk of ensnarement or obligation. He could recall nothing that a woman he had not seen for so long could possibly require of him; certainly nothing that would not be easy to refuse.

Shadbold had once asserted in a lighter moment to Jason Price (who was boasting of having had some woman in one night a superlative number of times) that he was himself still a comparative stranger in the corridors of impotence, but he had at once dismissed from his mind, whatever attractions Isolde Upjohn might retain, any question of attempting to achieve goals so keenly sought in the distant past. That resolution was made as much in the light of unforeseeable jeopardies of more kinds than one, in which any such fulfilment or attempt at fulfilment might land him, as on account of a grain of self-distrust. Besides he did not for a moment doubt that the evidently quite strong motivation of her visit was inspired not so much by pure affection, still less love, as desire to get something out of him. Notwithstanding effusive overtones that aim had been more or less admitted during the telephone conversation.

One thing at least had been clear to Shadbold, only too clear, while he attempted to define his own feelings in relation to what was not much less than a thunderbolt. Unlike the effect of the Winterwade Diary, this prospect of confrontation with Cynara (as Jason Price would certainly have schematized what lay ahead) had the very opposite effect to striking Shadbold sick from an old passion. In fact he could not imagine why only a few weeks ago Isolde Upjohn’s trip to Paris with Winterwade had seemed so highly objectionable to himself. Now, thought Shadbold, the best to be hoped for was that this reunion should not too painfully

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