"The whole Truth and nothing but the Truth." What absurdity for any story-teller in the world to think that he can get that—and what arrogance! This book is the truth about these children as near as I can get to it, and the truth about that strange year 1920 in that strange town, London, as faithfully as I can recollect, but it isn't everybody's Truth. Far from it—and a good thing too.
Henry's rooms were at the top of 24 Panton Street. To get to them you placed a Yale key in the lock of an old brown door, brushed your way through a dim passage, climbed a shabby staircase past the doors of the Hon. Nigel Bruce, Captain D'Arcy Sinclair, Claude Bottome, the singer, and old Sir Henry Bristow, who painted his face and wore stays. This was distinguished company for Henry who was at the beginning of his independent life in London, and the knowledge that he was in the very centre of the Metropolis, that the Comedy Theatre was nearly opposite his door and Piccadilly only a minute away gratified him so much that he did not object to paying three guineas a week for a small bed-sitting room without breakfast. It was a very small room, just under the roof, and Henry who was long and bony spent a good deal of his time in a doubled-up position that was neither aesthetic nor healthy. Three guineas a week is twelve pounds twelve shillings a month, and one hundred and fifty-one pounds four shillings a year. He had a hundred and fifty pounds a year of his own, left to him by his old grandfather, and by eager and even optimistic calculation he reckoned that from his literary labours he would earn at least another hundred pounds in his London twelve months. Even then, however, he would not have risked these handsome lodgings had he not only a month ago, through the kind services of his priggish brother-in-law, Philip Mark, obtained a secretaryship with Sir Charles Duncombe, Bart., at exactly one hundred and fifty pounds per annum.
With inky fingers and a beating heart he produced this estimate:
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| Income from Grandfather | 150 | 0 | 0 | |
| Literary Earnings | 100 | 0 | 0 | |
| Sir Ronald D. | 150 | 0 | 0 | |
| _____ | _____ | _____ | ||
| Grand Total | £400 | 0 | 0 |
And against this he set:
| £ | s. | d. | ||
| Rooms | 163 | 16 | 0 | |
| Food | 100 | 0 | 0 | |
| Clothes | 50 | 0 | 0 | |
| Etceteras | 50 | 0 | 0 | |
| ______ | ______ | _____ | ||
| 363 | 16 | 0 | ||
| Saved in first year in London | 36 | 4 | 0 |
There were certain risks about this estimate. For one thing literature might, conceivably, not contribute her hundred pounds quite so completely as he hoped. On the other hand, she might contribute more. . . .
Again Henry was on trial with Sir Charles, was going into his service the day after to-morrow for the first time, had never been secretary to any one in his life before, and was not by temperament fitted entirely for work that needed those two most Damnable and Soul Destroying of attributes, Accuracy and Method. He had seen Sir Charles only once, and the grim austerity of that gentleman's aristocratic features had not been encouraging.
Never mind. It was all enchanting. What was life for if one did not take risks? Every one was taking risks, from Mr. Lloyd George down to (or possibly up to) Georges Carpentier and Mr. Dempsey—Henry did not wish to be behind the rest.
Mr. King, his landlord, had suggested to him that he might possibly be willing to lay a new wall-paper and a handsome rug or carpet. There was no doubt at all that the room needed these things; the wall-paper had once been green, was now in many places yellow and gave an exact account of the precise spots where the sporting prints of the last tenant (young Nigel Frost Bellingham) had hung. The carpet, red many years ago, resembled nothing so much as a map of Europe with lakes, rivers, hills, and valleys clearly defined in grey and brown outline. Henry explained to Mr. King that he would wish to wait for a month or two to see how his fortunes progressed before he made further purchases, upon which Mr. King, staring just over Henry's shoulder at the green wall-paper, remarked that it was usual for gentlemen to pay a month's rent in advance, upon which Henry, blushing, suggested that an improvement in his fortunes was perfectly certain and that he was private secretary to Sir Charles Duncombe, Bart., of whom Mr. King had doubtless heard. Mr. King, bowing his head as of one who would say that there was no Baronet in the United Kingdom of whom he had not heard, nevertheless regretted that the rule concerning the month's rent was constant, unchanging and could, in no circumstances whatever, be altered.