to defend the realm, and it’s up to you not to get caught out.... Remember, you’ll get no help from me. You’ve got to wise up about Gresson with the whole forces of the British State arrayed officially against you. I guess it’s a steep proposition, but you’re man enough to make good.” 

 As we shook hands, he added a last word. “You must take your own time, but it’s not a case for slouching. Every day that passes Ivery is sending out the worst kind of poison. The Boche is blowing up for a big campaign in the field, and a big effort to shake the nerve and confuse the judgement of our civilians. The whole earth’s war-weary, and we’ve about reached the danger-point. There’s pretty big stakes hang on you, Dick, for things are getting mighty delicate.” 

 I purchased a new novel in the shop and reached St Pancras in time to have a cup of tea at the buffet. Ivery was at the bookstall buying an evening paper. When we got into the carriage he seized my Punch and kept laughing and calling my attention to the pictures. As I looked at him, I thought that he made a perfect picture of the citizen turned countryman, going back of an evening to his innocent home. Everything was right—his neat tweeds, his light spats, his spotted neckcloth, and his aquascutum. 

 Not that I dared look at him much. What I had learned made me eager to search his face, but I did not dare show any increased interest. I had always been a little off-hand with him, for I had never much liked him, so I had to keep on the same manner. He was as merry as a grig, full of chat and very friendly and amusing. I remember he picked up the book I had brought off that morning to read in the train—the second volume of Hazlitt’s Essays, the last of my English classics—and discoursed so wisely about books that I wished I had spent more time in his company at Biggleswick. 

 “Hazlitt was the academic Radical of his day,” he said. “He is always lashing himself into a state of theoretical fury over abuses he has never encountered in person. Men who are up against the real thing save their breath for action.” 

 That gave me my cue to tell him about my journey to the North. I said I had learned a lot in Biggleswick, but I wanted to see industrial life at close quarters. “Otherwise I might become like Hazlitt,” I said. 

 He was very interested and encouraging. “That’s the right way to set about it,” he said. “Where were you thinking of going?” 

 I told him that I had half thought of 

 Prev. P 38/277 next