to mr stodham, i think, mr torrance’s books were the man. he—perhaps he alone in england—possessed a full set of the thirty-three volumes produced by mr torrance under his own name in thirteen years. “it is wonderful,” said ann once, “that the dancing of a pen over a sheet of paper can pay the rent and the baker’s bill, and it hardly seems right. but, still, it appears there are people born that can do nothing else, and they must live like the rest of us.... and i will say that mr torrance is one of the best of us, though he has that peculiarity.”

mr stodham could not trust himself to speak. he really liked ann: furthermore, he knew that she was wiser than he: finally, everyone at that moment had something better to think of, because jack and roland had put on the gloves. mr stodham, consequently, quoted george borrow:

“there’s the wind on the heath, brother; if i could only feel that, i would gladly live for ever. dosta, we’ll now go to the tents and put on the gloves; and i’ll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother.”

jack overheard him, and at the end of the round said, “what was that, mr stodham? say it again.” when the words of jasper had been repeated, “jolly good,” said jack, “but what puzzles me is how a man who knew that could bother to write a book. there must have been something the matter with him. perhaps he didn’t really believe what he wrote.” and so they had another round.

mr stodham liked everything at abercorran house. liking was his chief faculty, and there it had unstinted exercise. probably he liked the very wife whom he escaped by going either to the country or to abercorran house. an accident had first brought him among the morgans. one day as he happened to be passing down the farm lane a child threw a ball unintentionally over into the wilderness. after it went mr stodham in an instant, not quite missing the nails at the top of the fence. the long grass of the wilderness and his own bad sight kept the ball hidden until the child went[156] away in despair, unknown to him, for he continued the search. there perhaps he would have been searching still, if the wilderness had not been built over, and if roland had not come along and found man and ball almost in the same moment. here the matter could not end. for mr stodham, unawares, had been reduced by a nail in the fence to a condition which the public does not tolerate. it seems that he offered to wait for nightfall when roland had pointed out his misfortune. he was stubborn, to the verge of being abject, in apologising for his presence, and, by implication, for his existence, and in not wishing to cause any trouble to roland or the family. gently but firmly roland lured him upstairs and gave him a pair of trousers beyond reproach. on the following day when he reappeared, bearing the trousers and renewed apologies, the family, out in the yard, was in full parliament assembled. he made a little speech, cheered by everyone but higgs. presumably he was so fascinated by the scene that the cheering did not disconcert him. he could not get away, especially as his stick had been seized by spot the fox-terrier, who was now with apparently no inconvenience to himself, being whirled round and round on[157] the end of it by jack. ann came out with his own trousers thoroughly reformed, and she had to be thanked. lastly, mr morgan carried him off before the stick had been recovered. next day, therefore, he had to come again in search of the stick, a priceless favourite before spot had eaten it. mr morgan consoled him and cemented the acquaintance by giving him an ash stick with a handle formed by nature in the likeness of a camel’s head. mr morgan said that the stick had been cut on craig-y-dinas—the very place where the ash stick was cut, which a certain welshman was carrying on london bridge when he was espied by a magician, who asked to be taken to the mother tree, which in as long as it takes to walk three hundred miles was done, with the result that a cave was found on craig-y-dinas, full of treasure which was guarded by king arthur and his knights, who were, however, sleeping a sleep only to be disturbed by a certain bell, which the welshman by ill luck did ring, with the predicted result, that the king and his knights rose up in their armour and so terrified him that he forgot the word which would have sent them to sleep again, and he dropped all his treasure, ran for his life, and could never more find cave, stick, or[158] magician for all his seeking. mr stodham responded in a sententious pretty speech, saying in effect that with such a stick he needed no other kind of treasure than those it would inevitably conduct him to—the hills, rivers, woods, and meadows of the home-counties, and some day, he hoped, to craig-y-dinas itself.

thus mr stodham came again and again, to love, honour, and obey the ways of abercorran house, just as he did the entirely different ways of mrs stodham’s house. he, and no other, taught philip the way to that piece of country which became ours. harry and lewis, still under ten, awakened in him a faculty for spinning yarns. what they were nobody but those three knew; for the performance was so special and select that the two boys formed the sole audience. they revealed nothing of what enchanted them. or was there anything more than at first appeared in harry’s musing remark on being questioned about mr stodham’s stories: “mr stodham’s face is like a rat,” a remark which was accompanied by a nibbling grimace which caused smiles of recognition and some laughter? “yes,” added lewis, penitent at the laughter he had provoked, “a very good rat!” perhaps the shy, sandy man’s shrunken face was worked[159] up to an unwonted—and therefore comical—freedom of expression in the excitement of these tales, and this fascinated the boys and made them his firm supporters. he was a tall, thin, sandy-haired, sandy-bearded man with spectacles. as if tobacco smoke had mummified him, his face was of a dried yellow. he stooped slightly and walked rapidly with long strides. nobody had professed to find anything great or good in him, yet several different kinds of men spoke of him with liking as well as pity. if there was something exceptional about this most ordinary man, it was his youthfulness. it had been said that he was too dull to grow old. but youthful he was, though it is hard to say how, since he truly was dull, and if he had not been indolent must have been a bore—but he was too modest for anyone to allow him to bore. as you walked behind him you had little doubt of his youthfulness. something in the loose-jointed lightness and irresponsibility of his gait suggested a boy, and if you had been following him with this thought, and he turned round to greet you, the wrinkled, smoky face was a great surprise. there was something in his nature corresponding to this loose-jointed walk. the dogs, i think, knew it: they could do what[160] they liked with him, and for them he carried sugar as a regular cargo.

thus, mr stodham began to be interwoven with that fellowship. i was perhaps too old for his romantic tales, but i have heard him telling mr morgan what he considered interesting in his own life. whatever it was, it revealed his shyness, or his excitability, or his innocence. once he gave a long explanation of how he came to set an uncommon value on a certain book which he was lending to mr morgan. some winters before, something caused him to wake at midnight and sit up to listen, in spite of the usual powerful inclination to sleep again. at a sharp noise on the pane he threw up the window. all the flints of the road were clear in an unusual light. the white face of a policeman was looking up at him, and he heard the words “fire!... come down.” rapidly half dressing as if executing an order which he did not understand, he was outside on the pavement in a minute. it was next door. the building was losing all resemblance to a barber’s shop; like mad birds the flames flew across it and out at the shuttered windows. the policeman was hammering at the door, to waken those who were in their beds above the[161] fire. heavily they slept, and some minutes passed before a man came down carrying an umbrella, a woman arranging her hair. the shriek of a cat followed them out of the door, but so also did the flames. soon the shop was an oblong box containing one great upright body of fire, through which could be seen the twisted skeleton remains of iron bedsteads. quietly the street had become packed with onlookers—curious neighbours, passers-by, and a few night-wanderers who had souls above merely keeping warm by standing against the walls of bakeries. there were three fire engines. with a low hum the jets of water yielded themselves to the fire and were part of it. suddenly a fireman noticed that mr stodham’s own window was lit from within, thought that the flames had penetrated so far, and was about to direct the hose on it when mr stodham shook off the charm of the tumultuous glare to explain that he had left a lamp burning. the man went with him into the house, but could find no fire. left alone in his room mr stodham noticed that it was hot, pleasantly hot for a january midnight. the wall that he leaned against was pleasant until he remembered the fire on the other side. he made haste to save his papers.[162] instead of sorting them roughly there, he proposed to remove, not the separate drawers, but the whole desk. he forgot that it had only entered the house, in the first place, after having the castors detached, and omitting to do this now, he wedged it firmly between the walls and so barricaded the main passage of the house. he took out all the contents of all the drawers, deposited them with a neighbour whom he had never before seen. then he returned to his room. he was alone with his books, and had to choose among them, which he should take and save. they numbered several hundred, including a shelf of the very first books he had read to himself. a large proportion consisted of the books of his youth. having been lived through by the eager, docile stodham, these poems, romances, essays, autobiographies, had each a genuine personality, however slight the difference of its cover from its neighbour’s. another class represented aspirations, regrets, oblivions: half cut, dustier than the rest, these wore strange, sullen, ironical, or actually hostile looks. some had been bought because it was inevitable that a young man should have a copy. others, chiefly volumes in quarto or folio, played something like the parts of family[163] portraits in a house of one of the new-rich. an unsuspecting ostentation had gone with some affection to their purchase. they gave a hint of “the dark backward and abysm of time” to that small room, dingy but new.... he leaned against the hot wall, receiving their various looks, returning them. several times he bent forward to clutch this one or that, but saw another which he could not forsake for it, and so left both. he moved up close to the rows: he stood on tip-toe, he knelt. some books he touched, others he opened. he put each one back. the room was silent with memory. he might have put them all in safety by this time. the most unexpected claims were made. for example, there was a black-letter “morte d’arthur” in olive calf. he had paid so much for it that he had to keep its existence secret: brown paper both concealed and protected it. he did, in fact, put this with a few others, chosen from time to time, on a chair. only a very few were without any claims—histories and the like, of which there are thousands of copies, all the same. the unread and never-to-be-read volumes put in claims unexpectedly. no refusal could be made without a qualm. he looked at the select[164] pile on the chair dissatisfied. rather than take them only he would go away empty. “you had better look sharp, sir,” said a fireman, vaulting over the desk. mr stodham looked at the mute multitude of books and saw all in a flash. nevertheless not one could he make up his mind to rescue. but on the mantelpiece lay a single book until now unnoticed—a small eighteenth century book in worn contemporary binding, an illustrated book of travels in africa by a frenchman—which he had long ago paid twopence for and discontinued his relations with it. he swiftly picked up this book and was, therefore, able to lend it to mr morgan for the sake of the plates. but after all he saved all his other books also. the fire did not reach his house, and the one thing damaged was the desk which the firemen had to leap on to and over in passing through to the back of the house.