Foe-Farrell | Page 7

to like him intimately.
This secretiveness had its value, to be sure. It gave you a sense of being
privileged by his friendship. . . . Or, no; that's too priggish for my
meaning. Foe wasn't a bit of a prig. It was only because he had, on his
record already, so much brains that the ordinary man who met him in
my rooms was disposed to wonder how he could be so good a fellow.
Get into your minds, please, that he was a good fellow, and that no one
doubted it; of the sort that listens and doesn't speak out of his turn.
He had a great capacity for silence; and it's queer to me--since I've
thought over it--what a large share of our friendship consisted in just
sitting up into the small hours and smoking, and saying next to nothing.
I talked, no doubt: Foe didn't.
I shall go on calling him Foe. He was Jack to me, always; but Foe suits
better with the story; and besides . . . well, I suppose there's always
something in friendship that one chooses to keep in a cage. . . . The
only cage-mate that Jack--I mean Foe--ever allowed me was Jimmy
Caldecott, and that happened after we had both moved to London.

He--Foe--had taken a first-class in the Tripos, of course; and a
fellowship on top of that. But he did not stay up at Cambridge. He put
in the next few years at different London hospitals, published some
papers on the nervous system of animals, got appointed Professor of
Animal Morphology, in the South London University College (the
Silversmiths' College), and might wake up any morning to find himself
a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was already--I am talking of 1907,
when the tale starts--a Corresponding Member of three or four learned
Societies in Europe and the U.S.A., and had put a couple of honorary
doctorates to his account besides his Cambridge DSc.
As for me, I had rooms at first in Jermyn Street, then chambers in the
Inner Temple--my father, who had been Chairman of Quarter Sessions,
holding the opinion that I ought to read for the Bar, that I might be
better qualified in due time to deal out local justice down in
Warwickshire. I read a little, played cricket a good deal, stuck out three
or four London Seasons, travelled a bit, shot a bit in East Africa (Oh, I
forgot to say I'd put in a year in the South African War); climbed a bit,
in Switzerland, and afterwards in the Himalayas; come home to write a
paper for the Geographical Society; got bitten with Socialism and
certain Fabian notions, and put in some time with an East-End
Settlement besides attending many crowded and unsavoury public
meetings to urge what was vaguely known as Betterment. When I took
courage and made a clean breast of my new opinions to my father, the
old man answered very composedly that he too had been a Radical in
his time, and had come out of it all right. . . . By all means let me go on
with my spouting: capital practice for public life: hoped I should take
my place one of these days in the County Council at home: wouldn't
even mind seeing me in Parliament, etc.--all with the wise calm of one
who has passed his three-score years and ten, found the world good,
made it a little better, hunted his own harriers and learnt, long since,
every way in which hares run. So I returned and somehow found
myself pledged to compete as a Progressive for the next London
County Council--for a constituency down Bethnal Green way. In all
this, you see, my orbit and Foe's wouldn't often intersect. But we dined
together on birthdays and other occasions. One year I took him down to
the Derby, on the ground that it was part of a liberal education. In the

paddock he nodded at a horse in blinkers and said, "What's the matter
with that fellow?" "St. Amant," said I, and began to explain why
Hayhoe had put blinkers on him. "Where does he stand in the betting?"
asked Foe. "Why, man," said I, "at 5 to 1. You can't risk good money
on a horse of that temper. I've put mine on the French horse over
there--Gouvernant--easy favourite--7 to 4 on." "Oh," said he, in a silly
sort of way, "I thought St. Amant might be your French horse--it's a
French name isn't it? . . . As for your Gouvernant, I advise you to run
for your life and hedge: the animal is working up for a stage fright. A
touch more and he's dished before the flag drops. Now, whether the
blinkers have done it or not, that