Mullings laughed.
“Do you really think I shall?” he asked. “Have another whisky, Cumberland, and go on talking; you give me confidence. And confidence is half the battle, isn’t it?”
“So they say. But haven’t you confidence already?”
“Well, it ebbs and it flows.”
“Oh, he’s all right,” said Sydney Grew. “Don’t worry about Mullings. But what do you mean when you say that I shall do valuable work?”
“You’re an artist, and you’ve got personality and [181] ]ideas. Haven’t you often reproached me on the score that you meet me for an hour and, a month later, see all that you have told me in two or three articles that in the meantime I have written for the papers?”
“Well, you do pick my brains, Gerald. You know you do.”
“Simply because they are worth picking. And if I didn’t, they would be lost to the world. Why don’t you yourself write? You must write more and talk less.”
He took my advice, and began a career that promised much until the war interrupted it.
In the meantime, Mullings has “arrived” and I am longing to meet him again, for I know very well he will be still fat and jolly, that he will still allow me to play accompaniments for him on any old piano that is handy, and that we shall talk excitedly of Bantock and Julius Harrison, of the Manchester Musical Society and Phyllis Lett, of “Colonel” Anderton and Ernest Newman, and of everything and everybody that made those far-off days so full of interest and so sweet to remember.