He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he didn't read newspapers, and he
didn't ever go out to tea. Then what on earth _did_ he do? I found out
one thing, at any rate, on that following Sunday; he _walked_. He called
it tramping, but no tramp that ever lived went at his pace. By the time
we reached Reigate I longed for a corner seat in a railway compartment.
All he said was: "Ten miles isn't really enough. I usually do twelve or
fifteen."
We didn't talk much during the walk. I was far too breathless most of
the time to gasp more than a few words consecutively, but I thought a
good deal. I thought, for instance: Why am I running myself out of
breath on these confounded hills with a man who, so far, has shown
himself to be no more than a conglomeration of abstinences? And the only
answer I could arrive at was: You want to get to know him, and this,
apparently, is the only way.
I believe it _was_ the only way. I believe that nobody--no man, at any
rate--could have become his friend without those long preliminary
periods of silence. He was a locked box, and you had to believe, rather
than know, that there was something in it. I believed, and later on I
knew; but the revelation was very slow. Within a couple of months,
perhaps, I knew the ordinary obvious things about his life that most
people would have let me know within a couple of hours. Even then he
didn't exactly tell me anything. I deduced, or picked up information by
accident, or else asked a deliberate question and received a rather
embarrassed or grudging answer. The first time I went up to his room at
the College, for example, I saw "Dr. M. Terrington" painted on the
outside of the door. Till then I hadn't had the least idea that he was a
doctor, and nor had Severn, for at the dinner-party he had introduced
him as plain "mister." Anyhow, the information on the door seemed clear
enough to me, though it wasn't till a week after that I really learned
the truth, and then only by chance. I had cut my hand, and he bandaged
it for me very skilfully, which led me to make some complimentary remark
about his "doctor's skill." He told me then that he wasn't a medical
doctor at all, but a "mere Ph.D." He spoke of it as if it were quite a
minor distinction instead of being (as I afterwards found out) almost
unique for a man of his age.
Gradually, in such ways as this, I got to know the truth about him. It
wasn't at all exciting. He had sprung from poor parents (both of them
now dead), and had worked his way up to the university by a series of
scholarships and exhibitions which, though distinguished enough in
themselves, would be tedious to record. He had no relatives who ever
troubled about him, and I think I can say that until he came into
contact with me and the Severns he had no friends either. He worked
hard, knew nobody, went nowhere, and cared for nothing but his
microscopes and slides. Twice a week he lectured to a very small class,
and the fees from this, along with certain scholarship monies, made his
existence just financially possible.
He had so little to do with anybody that I can recall only three remarks
made about him by people who knew him before I did. The first was made
by a girl-student at his lectures; she said, very doubtfully: "He looks
as if he _might_ be interesting"--evidently a different thing from
looking interesting. The second came quite casually from the lips of an
A.B.C. waitress at the tea-shop where he took a midday roll and glass of
milk. I had arranged to meet him there one day and arrived too early;
whereat the waitress, who had seen us together before, looked at the
clock and said: "It's only seven minutes past one, and he never comes in
till ten past. We tell the time by him here." And the third remark was
his landlady's. She was a faded, respectable creature burdened by a
husband who drank, and to her the young gentleman lodger was clearly the
one central rock of stability in a world of bewildering fluctuations.
"He appreciates me," she said, with an implied resentment against the
rest of the world, "and I _do_ like to be appreciated."