Chapter 2

I MAY as well say at once that this little record pretends in no
degree to be a picture either of my introduction to Mr. Paraday or
of certain proximate steps and stages. The scheme of my narrative
allows no space for these things, and in any case a prohibitory
sentiment would hang about my recollection of so rare an hour.
These meagre notes are essentially private, so that if they see the
light the insidious forces that, as my story itself shows, make at
present for publicity will simply have overmastered my precautions.
The curtain fell lately enough on the lamentable drama. My memory
of the day I alighted at Mr. Paraday's door is a fresh memory of
kindness, hospitality, compassion, and of the wonderful
illuminating talk in which the welcome was conveyed. Some voice of
the air had taught me the right moment, the moment of his life at
which an act of unexpected young allegiance might most come home to
him. He had recently recovered from a long, grave illness. I had
gone to the neighbouring inn for the night, but I spent the evening
in his company, and he insisted the next day on my sleeping under
his roof. I hadn't an indefinite leave: Mr. Pinhorn supposed us
to put our victims through on the gallop. It was later, in the
office, that the rude motions of the jig were set to music. I
fortified myself, however, as my training had taught me to do, by
the conviction that nothing could be more advantageous for my
article than to be written in the very atmosphere. I said nothing
to Mr. Paraday about it, but in the morning, after my remove from
the inn, while he was occupied in his study, as he had notified me
he should need to be, I committed to paper the main heads of my
impression. Then thinking to commend myself to Mr. Pinhorn by my
celerity, I walked out and posted my little packet before luncheon.
Once my paper was written I was free to stay on, and if it was
calculated to divert attention from my levity in so doing I could
reflect with satisfaction that I had never been so clever. I don't
mean to deny of course that I was aware it was much too good for
Mr. Pinhorn; but I was equally conscious that Mr. Pinhorn had the
supreme shrewdness of recognising from time to time the cases in
which an article was not too bad only because it was too good.
There was nothing he loved so much as to print on the right
occasion a thing he hated. I had begun my visit to the great man
on a Monday, and on the Wednesday his book came out. A copy of it
arrived by the first post, and he let me go out into the garden
with it immediately after breakfast, I read it from beginning to
end that day, and in the evening he asked me to remain with him the
rest of the week and over the Sunday.

That night my manuscript came