I remember this struck me as being a very comforting reflection, and from that moment Bruce and I have always been the best of friends.
Later on we shared a study together, the corner study next "the big school," and one summer holiday I went and stayed with his people in that big, ivy-covered house near Goring that you can see from the railway line.
When we left school our paths separated for a time. I started at journalism in London, while Bruce was sent to France "to learn the language." I think his father had some idea that he would make a good Prime Minister.
When the old man died, Bruce came home and settled in London. He had come into about £800 a year, and had no intention at all of going into politics.
Since then we have always seen a good deal of each other. He is just the same cheery, irresponsible, adventurous, good-natured chap that he was at school. I don't think we ever had anything approaching a quarrel in our lives.
I have told you all this so that you can see exactly what sort of people we are. It's really quite unnecessary, because you won't believe my story in any case. Still, unless Bruce and I are insane, the thing really happened; and as there is absolutely no reason to suppose we are, I intend to tell it and get it off my chest.
I will begin right at the beginning. It was on the 9th of February that I first learned of Mervyn Bruce's death. I saw it in the Daily Mail while I was having breakfast. There was a portrait of him in rough shooting clothes and a cork helmet—it must have been taken many years before—and a full column about his life and adventures. He had died at Etretat, where the paper said he had been living for some time.
I didn't bother myself about it, because I knew that he and Bruce had not been on speaking terms for years. There had been some silly family squabble somewhere back in the dark ages, and the old explorer was one of those fatuous people who think it a point of honour to keep a thing like that up for ever. So, after making an ineffectual attempt at a reconciliation when he was in France, Bruce had simply let matters slide.
I was therefore a little surprised to get a line from him on the 11th, saying that he was just off to Etretat, to see about his uncle's funeral. "The fact is," he wrote, "the old chap had quarrelled with everyone by the time he died, and as I'm his nearest relation I suppose I ought to see him through. I shall be back by the end of the week."
It was six days before I heard anything more. Then, late on Tuesday evening, I received a wire from him at the office: