Occasionally he sold these bits of joy for half a guinea, his wife
pasting the results neatly in a big press album from which he often
read aloud on Sunday nights when the children were in bed. They were
signed 'Montmorency Minks'; and bore evidence of occasional pencil
corrections on the margin with a view to publication later in a
volume. And sometimes there were little lyrical fragments too, in a
wild, original metre, influenced by Shelley and yet entirely his own.
These had special pages to themselves at the end of the big book. But
usually he preferred the sonnet form; it was more sober, more
dignified. And just now the bumping of the Tube train shaped his
emotion into something that began with
Success that poisons many a baser mind
With thoughts of self, may lift--
but stopped there because, when he changed into another train, the
jerkier movement altered the rhythm into something more lyrical, and
he got somewhat confused between the two and ended by losing both.
He walked up the hill towards his tiny villa, hugging his secret and
anticipating with endless detail how he would break it to his wife. He
felt very proud and very happy. The half-mile trudge seemed like a few
yards.
He was a slim, rather insignificant figure of a man, neatly dressed,
the City clerk stamped plainly over all his person.
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