Hugh Walpole

“ Mr. Tonks crept in upon the consciousness of Mr. Harding very slowly. Mr. Harding could not really be said to be a very imaginative man. He had only an imagination about the possible size of his bookshop. With regard to his own daily affairs he was very practical and sensible. Nevertheless he found himself after a week or two hesitating before he took his walk to the station. Would Tonks be there springing down the steps towards him? Would his cheery laugh ring through South Ealing? Would Harding this time be ahead of him? ”

“ This large man was, in Harding's view, exactly the person of whom you would expect a crime. On the first morning the large man had insisted on walking with Harding to the station, he talked in a great booming voice about the weather, about the neighbouring music-hall and a dainty little piece who was dancing there, about some shares he had somewhere, about his being a widower, about some geraniums in his back garden, about some horses, about indigestion, and about where he was going for his summer holiday. ”

“ Really gives me the creeps. You might say there's nothing against him, and yet in a way there is. His being alive's against him, if you understand what I mean.” And then all the friends would laugh together and say that they understood perfectly.
There was one morning a most difficult moment when Tonks came down the steps with his dog, the most hideous mongrel you ever saw, kind of a fox-terrier with a black spot on its nose, and one ear half bitten off in a dog fight. The awkward thing was that the dog leapt upon Harding as though he were an old, old friend. ”

“ He went all the way with him to Leicester Square and would, Harding believed, have followed him to his bookshop had he not managed to lose him in the crowd. Work was spoilt for Harding that day. Whenever he tried to think clearly that man's booming voice seemed to get in the way, his large, bushy, black moustache seemed to whisk up and down the bookshelves, and his broad, aggressive chest overshadowed the customers. ”

“ NOTHING is perhaps more curious in ordinary daily life than the way in which somebody who has perhaps a very remote connection with ourselves and our affairs creeps in upon our consciousness and dominates it. ”

“ On that day Harding could have killed him, and he did manage to say as they drew near to the station, “Look here, I've got to think something out. Let me be quiet, won't you?” to which Tonks, who had been sneezing hysterically all down the road, replied through his cold-invaded nose: “All right, old feller; forgive by sneezing, won't you? Terrible things to get rid of, colds.”
The next stage of this affair was that Tonks's personality invaded the shop. ”

“ Tonks became more and more amiable, more and more voluble, was ever more and more persistently there.
THE next stage in the proceedings was that Harding dreamt about Tonks. He was not a man who dreamt very often; only occasionally, when he had had a late supper, he fell screaming from an enormous height, and he did occasionally dream about somebody coming into his shop with a first “Pilgrim's Progress”, in perfect condition, and offering it to him for sixpence, but he was on the whole most definitely not a dreamer. One night he saw Tonks standing in his room in his night-shirt. ”

“ I remember once staying with a man in a fine country house, surrounded by a magnificent park, shut off most securely from all the world, and worried almost to death by the personality of a certain butcher in a neighbouring village. ”

“ Some years ago, when he had first come to live in Ealing, he had noticed on his regular morning journey a large, heavy, red-faced man, who lived apparently in his own street, always plunged out of his door at precisely the moment when he, Harding, passed it, and so plunged apparently in order to have a bright morning conversation. ”

“ Tonks, saying that he hoped that he understood, that no kind of offence was intended, and that if there was one person in the world with whom he would like to talk at that moment it was Mr. Tonks, but that, in fact, there must be nobody at all. Harding thought this all out very carefully, and it seemed to him that there was nothing whatever to prevent him from carrying out his desire. ”

“ An old woman looked after him and his little house, cheated him and robbed him, scolded him and abused him, except when he was ill, when she adored him and took an enormous amount of trouble to make him comfortable. ”

“ I'm sort of lonely in that house. I've been wanting to ask you in for weeks past. I've got an organ in the dining-room you'd love to hear. It's as good as a church. You've never seen my dog, have you?”
“No, I haven't,” said Harding, “and don't want to.”
“Well, well,” said Tonks, slowly, “that's the end of that. I'm glad I've got the dog, though,” he said, as he went out of the shop
THERE began after this an even worse period for Harding, because although Tonks never actually met him now on the way to the station, never spoke to him indeed, he was always just round the corner. ”

“ Nobody but an old woman who comes in and does for 'im and a dawg. The dawg won't leave his bed. Must 'ave been a lonely sort of life for a man.”
“Yes. I am a friend of his,” said Harding, suddenly, “a very great friend.”
He pushed past the policeman and went into the house.
There was a doctor there, an old woman crying, the dog sitting on his hindquarters at the foot of the bed and not moving. There was Tonks himself in a nice clean night-shirt with his hair brushed, looking very calm and quiet, a suggestion of a smile hovering about his mouth. ”