Boyce laughed. “Oh, you don’t know Bobby. Nobody does here except my father. He’s an incurable sentimentalist. He lives an awfully lonely sort of life in some digs up in Alvaston. His mind’s crammed with poetry and old music and a lot of ethnological lumber. Do you know, he’s about the biggest authority in England on prehistoric man?”
“I hadn’t the least idea. I imagined he dreamed of nothing but bones and soft parts.”
“You would. . . . But he’s a wonderful chap really. Are you keen on poetry?”
“Of course I am.”
“There’s no ‘of course’ about it. I don’t imagine that your friends Brown and Maskew are particularly interested in it. My guvnor’s by way of being a poet, you know. Bobby’s awfully keen on his work. Do you know it?”
Edwin was ashamed to say he did not.
“Oh, I’m not in the least surprised,” said Boyce. “He’s not appreciated, you know, except by other poets, like this fellow Thompson. I think he’s rather good, as a matter of fact, quite apart from the fact that he’s my father. If you’ll come up to our place some day I can show you a lot of interesting things in his library: first editions and things like that. I’d no idea that you were keen on them.”
The tone implied such an appreciation of Edwin’s hectic past as typified by his solitary appearance on the stage of the Queen’s Theatre that he hastened to deny the impeachment. He was tremendously pleased to have struck a man like Boyce, who went on to talk about music, of which Edwin knew nothing, and exuded an easy atmosphere of culture, of a kind that he envied, without ever losing sight of the fact that Edwin had come to him in rather a questionable shape. Edwin was thrilled to think that he had reached the threshold of a new and exciting friendship which made his association with Brown and Maskew seem commonplace and shabby; but he was far too shy to force himself on Boyce, and so the acquaintance remained for many months at the exact stage in which it had begun, and he had to be content with the sudden insight that Boyce had given him into the hidden, romantic qualities of Dr. Moon.
Sometimes, while he was scrubbing his hands with carbolic soap, the only thing that really banished the smell of the dissecting room from his fingers, he would hear Boyce discussing music, and particularly the work of Tschaikowsky, whose sixth symphony had just inflamed his imagination, with Mr. Moon in his gloomy bunk, and he would go on washing his hands until they were ridged and sodden in the hope of hearing what they were saying or even of entering into their conversation, until W.G. would come along and drag him off to Joey’s, asking him what the hell he was dawdling about. Then Edwin would be almost ashamed of W.G.’s company, and hated himself for it, since he knew in his heart of hearts that, even if he were a Philistine, W.G. was one of the best and soundest fellows on earth.
The friendship with Boyce, however, was bound to come. It began with the formation of a small literary society, that had been originated by certain of the third-year men with whom Boyce was acquainted, and which held its meetings in the newly-opened smoking room that adjoined Dr. Moon’s chamber of horrors. Papers were read every fortnight, and discussions followed in which Edwin had scarcely dared to take part, but Boyce was a polished and fluent protagonist. In the end, when the first enthusiasms of the society, to which Brown and Maskew, naturally enough, did not belong, had been spent, Edwin was asked to read a paper. He chose for his subject Browne’s Religio Medici, a work with which this medical audience seemed strangely unacquainted. The paper was a success, and at the end of the meeting Boyce accosted him friendlily and asked him why he had never been up to see his father’s books. Edwin withheld the obvious reply that the invitation had not been pressed although he had never ceased to think of it; and Boyce at once suggested that they should go up to Alvaston together that evening. “We can put you up for the night if that will be more convenient,” he said.