"'Now how on earth did you know that, miles away at school, too?' laughed the Alderman.
"'Read it in the papers days ago. Where is she, Dad? I want to give her a good hug.'
"'I'm here, dear boy,' said a voice just over my shoulder, a voice I knew so well, that had helped me more in my childish hours than I could ever count, a voice that was perhaps the one that had taught me to speak correctly in those trying early days. She wasn't Mrs. Durham any longer, she was Mrs. Gold, but she hadn't altered one bit, and she was Mum then, as she has always been since.
"It wouldn't be honest to skip the next part of the story, and yet I always want to omit this part somehow, because it is entirely composed of events brought about by my own selfishness, obstinacy and pig-headedness, although as a young man I never realised the great grief and the real trouble I was causing to people who had always loved me and done everything for me.
"It started after the time I had left the University of Oxford. I had just commenced to feel my wings, so to speak. Everything there had helped to increase and nourish my love of literature, the set I mixed with had placed me on a sort of pedestal which I in no way deserved, everybody seemed to expect a lot from me, every one seemed to believe I would do great and wonderful things, and what was more disastrous still, I believed I should do wonderful things myself. Imbued with these beliefs, I went home after my last year at Oxford, determined to be a great writer, mark you, not an ordinary writer, since I was positively assured of the fact that I had only to make an appearance in print to be instantly proclaimed one of the immortals. Whilst I was in this ridiculous frame of mind, Dad unfolded to me the cherished scheme of his life. It was that I should go into his office and learn the business, and one day become the head of the firm.
"I think my blank face must have told them the utter hopelessness of the scheme, even before I had explained to them all my hopes and beliefs as to what I intended to be. One of the things I regret most in my life was the grief I saw only too plainly upon the old Dad's face. He had been brought up a business man all his life, he didn't believe in Literature as a living. He never argued, he didn't storm, hardly said anything, except begging me in an appealing sort of way to reconsider my decision. But I saw at once that I had dealt a death-blow to all his hopes, and, like the selfish young brute I was, I didn't care so long as I got my own way.
"I must have been utterly mad at the time, or intoxicated with my own belief in myself, for I even went further, and said I was going away without any further help of any sort, and that I would make a name, and not come back until I had done so. I refused all assistance; I only wanted their good-will and belief in me, and this I knew neither of them could honestly give me. The Dad implored me to let him assist me; they both begged me to live at home until I could rely upon myself, feel my own feet, or lastly, the most fatal sentence they could have uttered in my state of pride, to remain at home until I realised the failure I was about to make and alter my mind.
"What a hopeless and silly thing is pride. It must be a dangerous thing, too, if it can suddenly choke years of love and devotion.
"Pride was uppermost then when I left the house where we had all been so happy, and went out into the world, and I told them both I would only return when I had made myself famous, and not before. I believe they both broke down when I left, but I was a selfish young brute, and I never saw their view of things, nor how bitterly it must have hurt them. Retribution was not long in coming; I found as time went on that there were dozens of men, and women too, who could write better than I could. I found a living was not easy to get. I went even further still, and found at last that it was impossible to get any living at all. Education—there were hundreds of men, highly educated men, too, without any means of earning a living. Inspiration—and I had prated about inspiration often enough; inspiration only became inspiration when it was recognised as such. Luck, chance—I found there were no such things, save as words. Money—I never made any now, and gradually I went down and down, grew shabby, was passed hurriedly by friends of my own choosing; then followed shabby rooms and little food, only to give place in turn to an attic and no food at all. Pride must have been still at work with a vengeance, for whatever I suffered there was not a single day or night that I could not have rushed home and been welcomed like the Prodigal of old, and been rejoiced over. But the very idea of this gave me a chill feeling of horror. How could I go home with all my boasts unfulfilled? Was I to creep home a self-confessed failure, with the alternative of acknowledging it and mending my ways and becoming the head of a business firm with a heart embittered for life? I felt I would never do this. I would prefer to starve upon the Embankment, and when I made that resolution I knew only too well what I was in for. I had done the same thing in my earlier life, only it needed a far greater courage to face that life now than it required then. Things were at their very worst when one day, as I was wending my way through the poverty-stricken locality in which I lived, I was hailed by my name. The man was shabbily dressed, but about my own age as far as I could gather, yet I never remembered having met him before.
"'You don't remember me?' he asked.