MR. ODDY

This may seem to many people an old-­fashioned story; it is perhaps for that reason that I tell it. I can recover here, it may be, for myself something of the world that is already romantic, already beyond one’s reach, already precious for the things that one might have got out of it and didn’t.

London of but a few years before the war! What a commonplace to point out its difference from the London of to-­day and to emphasise the tiny period of time that made that difference!

We were all young and hopeful then; we could all live on a shilling a year and think ourselves well off; we could all sit in front of the lumbering horse buses and chat confidentially with the omniscient driver; we could all see Dan Leno in Pantomime and watch Farren dance at the Empire; we could all rummage among those cobwebby streets at the back of the Strand where Aldwych now flaunts her shining bosom and imagine Pendennis and Warrington, Copperfield and Traddles cheek by jowl with ourselves; we could all wait in the shilling queue for hours to see Ellen Terry in Captain Brassbound and Forbes-­Robertson in Hamlet; we could all cross the street without fear of imminent death, and above all we could all sink ourselves into that untidy, higgledy-piggledy, smoky and beery and gas-­lampy London gone utterly and for ever.

But I have no wish to be sentimental about it; there is a new London which is just as interesting to its new citizens as the old London was to myself. It is my age that is the matter; before the war one was so very young.

I like, though, to try and recapture that time, and so, as a simple way to do it, I seize upon a young man; Tommy Brown we will call him. I don’t know where Tommy Brown may be now; that Tommy Brown who lived as I did in two very small rooms in Glebe Place, Chelsea, who enjoyed hugely the sparse but economical meals provided so elegantly by two charming ladies at The Good Intent down by the river, that charming hostelry whence looking through the bow windows you could see the tubby barges go floating down the river, and the thin outline of Whistler’s Battersea Bridge, and in the small room itself were surrounded by who knows what geniuses in the lump, geniuses of Art and Letters, of the Stage and of the Law.

For Tommy Brown in those days life was Paradisal.

He had come boldly from Cambridge to throw himself upon London’s friendly bosom; despite all warnings to the contrary he was certain that it would be friendly; how could it be otherwise to so charming, so brilliant, so unusually attractive a young man? For Tommy was conceited beyond all that his youth warranted, conceited indeed without any reason at all.

He had, it is true, secured the post of reviewer to one of the London daily papers; this seemed to him when he looked back in later years a kind of miracle, but at the time no miracle at all, simply a just appreciation of his extraordinary talents. There was also reposing in one of the publishers’ offices at that moment the manuscript of a novel, a novel that appeared to him of astonishing brilliance, written in the purest English, sparkling with wit, tense with drama.

These things were fine and reassuring enough, but there was more than that; he felt in himself the power to rise to the greatest heights; he could not see how anything could stop him, it was his destiny.

This pride of his might have suffered some severe shocks were it not that he spent all of his time with other young gentlemen quite as conceited as himself. I have heard talk of the present young generation and its agreeable consciousness of its own merits, but I doubt if it is anything in comparison with that little group of twenty-­five years ago. After all, the war has intervened—however young we may be and however greatly we may pretend, this is an unstable world and for the moment heroics have departed from it. But for Tommy Brown and his friends the future was theirs and nobody could prevent it. Something pathetic in that as one looks back.

Tommy was not really so unpleasant a youth as I have described him—to his elders he must have appeared a baby, and his vitality at least they could envy. After all, why check his confidence? Life would do that heavily enough in its own good time.

Tommy, although he had no money and no prospects, was already engaged to a young woman, Miss Alice Smith. Alice Smith was an artist sharing with a girl friend a Chelsea studio, and she was as certain of her future as Tommy was of his.

They had met at a little Chelsea dance, and two days after the meeting they were engaged. She had no parents who mattered, and no money to speak of, so that the engagement was the easiest thing in the world.

Tommy, who had been in love before many times, was certain, as he told his friend Jack Robinson so often as to bore that gentleman severely, that this time at last he knew what love was. Alice ordered him about—with her at any rate his conceit fell away—she had read his novel and pronounced it old-­fashioned, the severest criticism she could possibly have made, and she thought his reviews amateur. He suffered then a good deal in her company. When he was away from her he told himself and everybody else that her critical judgment was marvellous, her comprehension of all the Arts quite astounding, but he left her sometimes with a miserable suspicion that perhaps after all he was not going to do anything very wonderful and that he would have to work very hard indeed to rise to her astonishing standards.

It was in such a mood of wholesome depression that he came one beautiful April day from the A.B.C. shop where he had been giving his Alice luncheon, and found his way to an old bookshop on the riverside round the corner from Oakley Street. This shop was kept by a gentleman called Mr. Burdett Coutts, and the grand associations of his name gave him from the very first a sort of splendour.

It was one of those old shops of which there are, thank God, still many examples surviving in London, in which the room was so small and the books so many that to move a step was to imperil your safety. Books ran in thick, tight rows from floor to ceiling everywhere, were piled in stacks upon the ground and hung in perilous heaps over chairs and window ledges.

Mr. Burdett Coutts himself, a stout and grizzled old man enveloped always in a grey shawl, crouched behind his spectacles in a far corner and took apparently no interest in anything save that he would snap the price at you if you brought him a volume and timorously enquired. He was not one of those old book­sellers dear to the heart of Anatole France and other great men who would love to discourse to you of the beauties of The Golden Ass, the possibility of Homer being a lady, or the virtues of the second Hyperion over the first. Not at all; he ate biscuits which stuck in his grizzly beard, and wrote perpetually in a large worm-­eaten ledger which was supposed by his customers to contain all the secrets of the universe.

It was just because Mr. Coutts never interfered with you that Tommy Brown loved his shop so dearly. If he had a true genuine passion that went far deeper than all his little superficial vanities and egotisms, it was his passion for books—books of any kind.

He had at this time no fine taste—all was fish that came to his net. The bundles of Thackeray and Dickens, parts tied up carelessly in coarse string, the old broken-­backed volumes of Radcliffe and Barham and Galt, the red and gold Colburn’s Novelists, all these were exciting to him, just as exciting as though they had been a first Gray’s Elegy or an original Robinson Crusoe.

He had, too, a touching weakness for the piles of fresh and neglected modern novels that lay in their discarded heaps on the dusty floor; young though he was, he was old enough to realise the pathos of these so short a time ago fresh from the bursting presses, so eagerly cherished through months of anxious watching by their fond authors, so swiftly forgotten, dead almost before they were born.

So he browsed, moving like a panting puppy with inquisitive nose from stack to stack with a gesture of excitement, tumbling a whole racket of books about his head, looking then anxiously to see whether the old man would be angry with him, and realising for the thousandth time that the old man never was.

It was on this day, then, rather sore from the arrogancies of his Alice, that he tried to restore his confidence among these friendly volumes. With a little thrill of excited pleasure he had just discovered a number of the volumes born of those romantic and tragedy-­haunted ‘ ’Nineties.’ Here in little thin volumes were the stories of Crackanthorpe, the poems of Dowson, the Keynotes of George Egerton, The Bishop’s Dilemma of Ella d’Arcy, The Happy Hypocrite of Max Beerbohm.

Had he only been wise enough to give there and then for that last whatever the old man had asked him for it he would have been fortunate indeed, but the pennies in his pocket were few—he was not yet a book collector, but rather that less expensive but more precious thing, a book adorer. He had the tiny volume in his hand, when he was aware that someone had entered the shop and was standing looking over his shoulder.

He turned slowly and saw someone who at first sight seemed vaguely familiar, so familiar that he was plunged into confusion at once by the sense that he ought to say ‘How do you do?’ but could not accurately place him. The gentleman also seemed to know him very well, for he said in a most friendly way, ‘Ah yes, the “ ’Nineties,” a very fruitful period.’

Tommy stammered something, put down the Max Beerbohm, moved a little, and pulled about him a sudden shower of volumes. The room was filled with the racket of their tumbling, and a cloud of dust thickened about them, creeping into eyes and mouth and nose.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Tommy stammered, and then, looking up, was sorry the more when he saw how extremely neat and tidy the gentleman was and how terribly the little accident must distress him.

Tommy’s friend must have been between sixty and seventy years of age, nearer seventy perhaps than sixty, but his black hair was thick and strong and stood up en brosse from a magnificent broad forehead. Indeed, so fine were the forehead and the turn of the head that the face itself was a little disappointing, being so round and chubby and amiable as to be almost babyish. It was not a weak face, however, the eyes being large and fine and the chin strong and determined.

The figure of this gentleman was short and thick-set and inclined to stoutness; he had the body of a prize-­fighter now resting on his laurels. He was very beautifully clothed in a black coat and waistcoat, pepper-­and-­salt trousers, and he stood leaning a little on a thick ebony cane, his legs planted apart, his whole attitude that of one who was accustomed to authority. He had the look of a magistrate, or even of a judge, and had his face been less kindly Tommy would have said good-­day, nodded to Mr. Burdett Coutts, and departed, but that was a smile difficult to resist.

‘Dear me,’ the gentleman said, ‘this is a very dusty shop. I have never been here before, but I gather by the way that you knock the books about that it’s an old friend of yours.’

Tommy giggled in a silly fashion, shifted from foot to foot, and then, desiring to seem very wise and learned, proved himself only very young and foolish.

‘The “ ’Nineties” are becoming quite romantic,’ he said in his most authoritative voice, ‘now that we’re getting a good distance from them.’

‘Ah, you think so!’ said the gentleman courteously; ‘that’s interesting. I’m getting to an age now, I’m afraid, when nothing seems romantic but one’s own youth and, ah, dear me! that was a very long time ago.’

This was exactly the way that kindly old gentlemen were supposed to talk, and Tommy listened with becoming attention.

‘In my young day,’ his friend continued, ‘George Eliot seemed to everybody a magnificent writer: a little heavy in hand for these days, I’m afraid. Now who is the god of your generation, if it isn’t impertinent to enquire?’

Tommy shifted again from foot to foot. Who was the god of his generation? If the truth must be told, in Tommy’s set there were no gods, only young men who might be gods if they lived long enough.

‘Well,’ said Tommy awkwardly, ‘Hardy, of course—er—it’s difficult to say, isn’t it?’

‘Very difficult,’ said the gentleman.

There was a pause then, which Tommy concluded by hinting that he was afraid that he must move forward to a very important engagement.

‘May I walk with you a little way?’ asked the gentleman very courteously. ‘Such a very beautiful afternoon.’

Once outside in the beautiful afternoon air everything was much easier; Tommy regained his self-confidence, and soon was talking with his accustomed ease and freedom. There was nothing very alarming in his friend after all; he seemed so very eager to hear everything that Tommy had to say. He was strangely ignorant too; he seemed to be interested in the Arts, but to know very little about them; certain names that were to Tommy household words were to this gentleman quite unknown. Tommy began to be a little patronising. They parted at the top of Oakley Street.

‘I wonder if you’d mind,’ the gentleman said, ‘our meeting again? The fact is, that I have very little opportunity of making friends with your generation. There are so many things that you could tell me. I am afraid it may be tiresome for you to spend an hour or two with so ancient a duffer as myself, but it would be very kind of you.’

Tommy was nothing if not generous; he said that he would enjoy another meeting very much. Of course he was very busy and his spare hours were not many, but a walk another afternoon could surely be managed. They made an appointment, they exchanged names; the gentleman’s name was Mr. Alfred Oddy.

That evening, in the middle of a hilarious Chelsea party, Tommy suddenly discovered to his surprise that it would please him very much to see Mr. Oddy walk in through the door.

Although it was a hilarious party Tommy was not very happy; for one thing, Spencer Russell, the novelist, was there and showed quite clearly that he didn’t think Tommy very interesting. Tommy had been led up and introduced to him, had said one or two things that seemed to himself very striking, but Spencer Russell had turned his back almost at once and entered into eager conversation with somebody else.

This wasn’t very pleasant, and then his own beloved Alice was behaving strangely; she seemed to have no eyes nor ears for anyone in the room save Spencer Russell, and this was the stranger in that only a week or so before she had in public condemned Spencer Russell’s novels, utterly and completely, stating that he was written out, had nothing to say, and was as good as dead. To-­night, however, he was not dead at all, and Tommy had the agony of observing her edge her way into the group surrounding him and then listen to him not only as though he were the fount of all wisdom, but an Adonis as well, which last was absurd seeing that he was fat and unwieldy and bald on the top of his head.

After a while Tommy came up to her and suggested that they should go, and received then the shock of his life when she told him that he could go if he liked, but that he was not to bother her. And she told him this in a voice so loud that everybody heard and many people tittered.

He left in a fury and spent then a night that he imagined to be sleepless, although in truth he slept during most of it.

It was with an eagerness that surprised himself that he met Mr. Oddy on the second occasion. He had not seen Alice for two days. He did not intend to be the one to apologise first; besides, he had nothing to apologise for; and yet during these two days there was scarcely a moment that he had not to restrain himself from running round to her studio and making it up.

When he met Mr. Oddy at the corner of Oakley Street he was a very miserable young man. He was so miserable that in five minutes he was pouring out all his woes.

He told Mr. Oddy everything, of his youth, his wonderful promise, and the extraordinary lack of appreciation shown to him by his relatives, of the historical novels that he had written at the age of anything from ten to sixteen and found only the cook for an audience, of his going to Cambridge, and his development there so that he became Editor of The Lion, that remarkable but very short-­lived literary journal, and the President of ‘The Bats,’ the most extraordinary Essay Club that Cambridge had ever known; of how, alas, he took only a third in History owing to the perverseness of examiners; and so on and so on, until he arrived in full flood at the whole history of his love for Alice, of her remarkable talents and beauty, but of her strange temper and arrogance and general feminine queerness.

Mr. Oddy listened to it all in the kindest way. There’s no knowing where they walked that afternoon; they crossed the bridge and adventured into Battersea Park, and finally had tea in a small shop smelling of stale buns and liquorice drops. It was only as they turned homewards that it occurred to Tommy that he had been talking during the whole afternoon. He had the grace to see that an apology was necessary.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said, flushing a little, ‘I’m afraid I have bored you dreadfully. The fact is that this last quarrel with Alice has upset me very badly. What would you do if you were in my position?’

Mr. Oddy sighed. ‘The trouble is,’ he said, ‘that I realise only too clearly that I shall never be in your position again. My time for romance is over, or at least I get my romance now in other ways. It wasn’t always so; there was a lady once beneath whose windows I stood night after night merely for the pleasure of seeing her candle outlined behind the blind.’

‘And did she love you,’ Tommy asked, ‘as much as you loved her?’

‘Nobody, my dear boy,’ Mr. Oddy replied, ‘loves you as much as you love them; either they love you more or they love you less. The first of these is often boring, the second always tragic. In the present case I should go and make it up; after all, happiness is always worth having, even at the sacrifice of one’s pride. She seems to me a very charming young lady.’

‘Oh, she is,’ Tommy answered eagerly. ‘I’ll take your advice, I’ll go this very evening; in fact, if you don’t mind, I think it would be rather a good time to find her in now.’

Mr. Oddy smiled and agreed; they parted to meet another day.

On the third occasion of their meeting, which was only two days after the second, Tommy cared for his companion enough to wish to find out something about him.

His scene of reconciliation with his beautiful Alice had not been as satisfactory as he had hoped; she had forgiven him indeed, but given him quite clearly to understand that she would stand none of his nonsense either now or hereafter. The satisfactory thing would have been for Tommy there and then to have left her, never to see her again; he would thus have preserved both his pride and his independence; but, alas, he was in love, terribly in love, and her indignation made her appear only the more magnificent.

And so, on this third meeting with his friend, he was quite humble and longing for affection.

And then his curiosity was stirred. Who was this handsome old gentleman with his touching desire for Tommy’s companionship? There was an air about him that seemed to suggest that he was someone of importance in his own world; beyond this there was an odd sense that Tommy knew him in some way, had seen him somewhere; so on this third occasion Tommy came out with his questions.

Who was he? Was he married? What was his profession, or was he perhaps retired now? And another question that Tommy would have liked to ask, and had not the impertinence, was as to why this so late interest in the Arts and combined with this interest this so complete ignorance?

Mr. Oddy seemed to know a great deal about everything else, but in this one direction his questions were childish. He seemed never to have heard of the great Spencer Russell at all (which secretly gave Tommy immense satisfaction), and as for geniuses like Mumpus and Peter Arrogance and Samuel Bird, even when Tommy explained how truly great these men were, Mr. Oddy appeared but little impressed.

‘Well, at least,’ Tommy burst out indignantly, ‘I suppose you’ve read something by Henry Galleon? Of course he’s a back number now, at least he is not modern, if you know what I mean, but then he’s been writing for centuries. Why, his first book came out when Trollope and George Eliot were still alive. Of course, between ourselves I think The Roads, for instance, a pretty fine book, but you should hear Spencer Russell go for it.’

No, Mr. Oddy had never heard of Henry Galleon.

But there followed a most enchanting description by Mr. Oddy of his life when he was a young man and how he once heard Dickens give a reading of A Christmas Carol, of how he saw an old lady in a sedan chair at Brighton (she was cracked, of course, and even then a hundred years after her time, but still he had seen it), of how London in his young day was as dark and dirty at night as it had been in Pepys’ time, of how crinolines when he was young were so large that it was one of the sights to see a lady getting into a cab, of how in the music-­halls there was a chairman who used to sit on the stage with a table in front of him, ring a bell and drink out of a mug of beer, of how he heard Jean de Reszke in Siegfried and Ternina in Tristan, and of how he had been at the first night when Ellen Terry and Irving had delighted the world with The Vicar of Wakefield.

Yes, not only had Mr. Oddy seen and done all these things, but he related the events in so enchanting a way, drew such odd little pictures of such unexpected things and made that old London live so vividly, that at last Tommy burst out in a volley of genuine enthusiasm: ‘Why, you ought to be a writer yourself! Why don’t you write your reminiscences?’

But Mr. Oddy shook his head gently: there were too many reminiscences, everyone was always reminiscing; who wanted to hear these old men talk?

At last, when they parted, Mr. Oddy had a request—one thing above all things that he would like would be to attend one of these evening gatherings with his young friend to hear these young men and women talk. He promised to sit very quietly in a corner—he wouldn’t be in anybody’s way.

Of course Tommy consented to take him; there would be one next week, a really good one; but in his heart of hearts he was a little shy. He was shy not only for himself but also for his friend.

During these weeks a strange and most unexpected affection had grown up in his heart for this old man; he really did like him immensely, he was so kind and gentle and considerate.

But he would be rather out of place with Spencer Russell and the others; he would probably say something foolish, and then the others would laugh. They were on the whole a rather ruthless set and were no respecters of persons.

However, the meeting was arranged; the evening came and with it Mr. Oddy, looking just as he always did, quiet and gentle but rather impressive in some way or another. Tommy introduced him to his hostess, Miss Thelma Bennet, that well-­known futuristic artist, and then carefully settled him down in a corner with Miss Bennet’s aunt, an old lady who appeared occasionally on her niece’s horizon but gave no trouble because she was stone deaf and cared only for knitting.

It was a lively evening; several of the brighter spirits were there, and there was a great deal of excellent talk about literature. Every writer over thirty was completely condemned save for those few remaining who had passed eighty years of age and ceased to produce.

Spencer Russell especially was at his best; reputations went down before his vigorous fist like ninepins. He was so scornful that his brilliance was, as Alice Smith everywhere proclaimed, ‘simply withering.’ Everyone came in for his lash, and especially Henry Galleon. There had been some article in some ancient monthly written by some ancient idiot suggesting that there was still something to be said for Galleon and that he had rendered some service to English literature. How Russell pulled that article to pieces! He even found a volume of Galleon’s among Miss Bennet’s books, took it down from the shelf and read extracts aloud to the laughing derision of the assembled company.

Then an odd thing occurred. Tommy, who loved to be in the intellectual swim, nevertheless stood up and defended Galleon. He defended him rather feebly, it is true, speaking of him as though he were an old man ready for the almshouse who never­theless deserved a little consideration and pity. He flushed as he spoke, and the scorn with which they greeted his defence altogether silenced him. It silenced him the more because Alice Smith was the most scornful of them all; she told him that he knew nothing and never would know anything, and she imitated his piping excited treble, and then everyone joined in.

How he hated this to happen before Mr. Oddy! How humiliating after all the things that he had told his friend, the implication that he was generally considered to be one of England’s most interesting young men, the implication above all that although she might be a little rough to him at times Alice really adored him, and was his warmest admirer. She did not apparently adore him to-­night, and when he went out at last with Mr. Oddy into the wintry, rain-­driven street it was all he could do to keep back tears of rage and indignation.

Mr. Oddy had, however, apparently enjoyed himself. He put his hand for a minute on the boy’s shoulder.

‘Good-­night, my dear boy,’ he said. ‘I thought it very gallant of you to stand up for that older writer as you did: that needed courage. I wonder,’ he went on, ‘whether you would allow me to come and take tea with you one day—just our two selves. It would be a great pleasure for me.’

And then, having received Tommy’s invitation, he vanished into the darkness.

On the day appointed, Mr. Oddy appeared punctually at Tommy’s rooms. That was not a very grand house in Glebe Place where Tommy lived, and a very soiled and battered landlady let Mr. Oddy in. He stumbled up the dark staircase that smelt of all the cabbage and all the beef and all the mutton ever consumed by lodgers between these walls, up again two flights of stairs, until at last there was the weather-­beaten door with Tommy’s visiting-­card nailed upon it. Inside was Tommy, a plate with little cakes, raspberry jam, and some very black-looking toast.

Mr. Oddy, however, was appreciative of everything; especially he looked at the books. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘you’ve got quite a number of the novels of that man you defended the other evening. I wonder you’re not ashamed to have them if they’re so out of date.’

‘To tell you the truth,’ said Tommy, speaking freely now that he was in his own castle, ‘I like Henry Galleon awfully. I’m afraid I pose a good deal when I’m with those other men; perhaps you’ve noticed it yourself. Of course Galleon is the greatest novelist we’ve got, with Hardy and Meredith, only he’s getting old, and everything that’s old is out of favour with our set.’

‘Naturally,’ said Mr. Oddy, quite approving, ‘of course it is.’

‘I have got a photograph of Galleon,’ said Tommy. ‘I cut it out of a publisher’s advertisement, but it was taken years ago.’

He went to his table, searched for a little and produced a small photograph of a very fierce-­looking gentleman with a black beard.

‘Dear me,’ said Mr. Oddy, ‘he does look alarming!’

‘Oh, that’s ever so old,’ said Tommy. ‘I expect he’s mild and soft now, but he’s a great man all the same; I’d like to see Spencer Russell write anything as fine as The Roads or The Pattern in the Carpet.’

They sat down to tea very happy and greatly pleased with one another.

‘I do wish,’ said Tommy, ‘that you’d tell me something about yourself; we’re such friends now, and I don’t know anything about you at all.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ said Mr. Oddy. ‘You’d find it so uninteresting if you did; mystery’s a great thing.’

‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘I don’t want to seem impertinent, and of course if you don’t want to tell me anything you needn’t, but—I know it sounds silly, but, you see, I like you most awfully. I haven’t liked anybody so much for ever so long, except Alice, of course. I don’t feel as though you were of another generation or anything; it’s just as though we were the same age!’

Mr. Oddy was enchanted. He put his hand on the boy’s for a moment and was going to say something, when they were interrupted by a knock on the door, and the terrible-­looking landlady appeared in the room. She apologised, but the afternoon post had come and she thought the young gentleman would like to see his letters. He took them, was about to put them down without opening them, when suddenly he blushed. ‘Oh, from Alice,’ he said. ‘Will you forgive me a moment?’

‘Of course,’ said Mr. Oddy.

The boy opened the letter and read it. It fell from his hand on to the table. He got up gropingly as though he could not see his way, and went to the window and stood there with his back to the room. There was a long silence.

‘Not bad news, I hope,’ said Mr. Oddy at last.

Tommy turned round. His face was grey and he was biting his lips. ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘she’s—gone off.’

‘Gone off?’ said Mr. Oddy, rising from the table.

‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘with Russell. They were married at a register office this morning.’

He half turned round to the window, put out his hands as though he would shield himself from some blow, then crumpled up into a chair, his head falling between his arms on the table.

Mr. Oddy waited. At last he said: ‘Oh, I’m sorry: that’s dreadful for you!’

The boy struggled, trying to raise his head and speak, but the words would not come. Mr. Oddy went behind him and put his hands on his shoulders.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘you mustn’t mind me. Of course, I’ll go if you like, but if you could think of me for a moment as your oldest friend, old enough to be your father, you know.’

Tommy clutched his sleeve, then, abandoning the struggle altogether, buried his head in Mr. Oddy’s beautiful black waistcoat.

Later he poured his heart out. Alice was all that he had; he knew that he wasn’t any good as a writer, he was a failure altogether; what he’d done he’d done for Alice, and now that she’d gone——

‘Well, there’s myself,’ said Mr. Oddy. ‘What I mean is that you’re not without a friend; and as for writing, if you only write to please somebody else, that’s no use; you’ve got to write because you can’t help it. There are too many writers in the world already for you to dare to add to their number unless you’re simply compelled to. But there—I’m preaching. If it’s any comfort to you to know, I went through just this same experience myself once—the lady whose candle I watched behind the blind. If you cared to, would you come and have dinner with me to-­night at my home? Only the two of us, you know; but don’t if you’d rather be alone.’

Tommy, clutching Mr. Oddy’s hand, said he would come.

About half-­past seven that evening he had beaten up his pride. Even in the depth of his misery he saw that they would never have got on together, he and Alice. He was quickly working himself into a fine state of hatred of the whole female race, and this helped him—he would be a bachelor all his days, a woman-­hater; he would preserve a glorious independence. How much better this freedom than a houseful of children and a bagful of debts.

Only, as he walked to the address that Mr. Oddy had given him he held sharply away from him the memory of those hours that he had spent with Alice, those hours of their early friendship when the world had been so wonderful a place that it had seemed to be made entirely of golden sunlight. He felt that he was an old man indeed as he mounted the steps of Mr. Oddy’s house.

It was a big house in Eaton Square. Mr. Oddy must be rich. He rang the bell, and a door was opened by a footman. He asked for Mr. Oddy.

The footman hesitated a little, and then, smiling, said: ‘Oh yes, sir, will you come in?’

He left his coat in the hall, mounted a broad staircase, and then was shown into the finest library that he had ever seen. Books! Shelf upon shelf of books, and glorious books, editions de luxe and, as he could see with half an eye, rare first editions and those lovely bindings in white parchment and vellum that he so longed one day himself to possess. On the broad writing-­table there was a large photograph of Meredith; it was signed in sprawling letters, ‘George Meredith, 1887.’ What could this mean? Mr. Oddy, who knew nothing about literature, had been given a photograph by George Meredith and had this wonderful library! He stared bewilderedly about him.

A door at the far end of the library opened and an elegant young man appeared. ‘Mr. Galleon,’ he said, ‘will be with you in a moment. Won’t you sit down?’