Shortly before this catastrophe I had been presented to a small “living” in Warwickshire by one of our distant and grandiose relatives who had the iniquitous right of advowson. I took Edmund down there in order that we might “discuss the situation.”
My parlour-maid at once fell in love with him, and he trod on one of the best pigeons in my modest loft.
I pointed out that our joint income, including my stipend, was likely to be less than £400 a year.
Edmund said that seemed a good lot for two unmarried blokes.
As his own share was less than £50, I thought this was cool.
“But you can’t stop on here indefinitely doing nothing.”
“No,” he agreed, “not indefinitely. I think there’s just time for a cigarette before dinner.”
It was impossible to get him to talk seriously about the future. When I tried I was always whirled away on the wings of his stories of places he had seen and men he had met. He talked so vividly and had so fully the artist trick of setting a character before one, in the round and alive in a sentence, that I once suggested writing as a possible career. His whole being radiated scorn.
“Quill-driving be damned,” he said. “Even if I knew how to do it, I’m not the sort of man. I’m the sort of man, at least I shall lead the sort of life, for other people to write about.”
I was actually, without consulting him, humbling myself to try a jerk at the strings of the “Family Influence” on his behalf, when he disappeared.