WILLIAM—AN ENGLISHMAN

CHAPTER I

William Tully was a little over three-and-twentywhen he emerged from the chrysalis stageof his clerkdom and became a Social Reformer.His life and doings until the age of twenty-three, hadgiven small promise of the distinction of his futurecareer; from a mild-mannered, pale-faced andunder-sized boy he had developed into a mild-mannered,pale-faced little adult standing five foot five in hisboots. Educated at a small private school in thesuburbs of London, his record for conduct waspractically spotless and he once took a prize for Divinity;further, to the surprise and relief of his preceptors,he managed to scrape through the Senior CambridgeLocal Examination before he was transferred to adesk in the office of a London insurance company.His preceptor-in-chief, in a neatly-written certificate,assured his future employers that they would findhim painstaking and obedient—and William, forthe first six years of his engagement, lived up to thecharacter given him. His mother, a sharp-eyed,masterful woman, had brought him up to bepainstaking and obedient; it might be said with truththat as long as she lived he did not know how to beotherwise. It is true he disliked his office superiorsvaguely, for the restrictions they placed upon hiswishes—just as, for the same reason, he vaguelydisliked his mother; but his wishes beingindeterminate and his ambition non-existent, his vaguedislike never stiffened into active resentment.

It would seem that the supreme effort of passinghis Cambridge Local had left him mentally exhaustedfor a season; at any rate, from the conclusion of hisschool-days till he made the acquaintance of Faraday,his reading was practically confined to romanticand humorous literature. He was a regular patronof the fiction department of the municipal lendinglibrary and did not disdain to spend modestly onperiodicals of the type of Snappy Bits. He wasunable to spend more than modestly because hisearnings, with the exception of a small sum for faresand pocket-money, were annexed by his mothereach Saturday as a matter of normal routine. Themanner of her annexation made discussion singularlydifficult; and if William ever felt stirrings ofrebellion over the weekly cash delivery he was carefulnever to betray them.

With his colleagues of the office Tully was anegligible quantity. He was not unpopular—it wasmerely that he did not matter. His mother's controlof the family funds was no doubt in part accountablefor his comrades' neglect of his society; but his ownhabits and manners were still more largely to blame,since besides being painstaking and obedient he wasunobtrusive and diffident. There was once a projecton foot in the office to take him out and make himdrunk—but nothing came of it because no one wassufficiently interested in William to give up anevening to the job....