t ended in our all going off together
in a bigger boat. That day marked a decline in Ronnie's regard for me as
an ex-member of a minor school eleven. It was not, perhaps, that he
admired me less, but that Delavoye, who played no games at all, had
nevertheless a way with him that fascinated man and boy alike.

With Ronnie, it was a way of cracking jokes and telling stories, and
taking an extraordinary interest in the boy's preparatory school, so
that its rather small beer came bubbling out in a sparkling brew that
Coplestone himself had failed to tap. Then Uvo could talk like an
inspired professional about the games he could not play, about books
like an author, and about adventures like a born adventurer. In Egypt,
moreover, he had seen a little life that went a long way in the telling;
conversely, one always felt that he had done a bigger thing or two out
there than he pretended. To a small boy, at all events, he was
irresistible. Had he been an usher at a school like Ronnie's he would
have had a string of them on either arm at every turn. As it was, a less
sensible father might well have been jealous of him before the holidays
were nearly over.

But it was just in the holidays that Coplestone was at his best; when
the boy went back in September, we were to see him at his worst. In the
beginning he was merely moody and depressed, and morose towards us two
as creatures who had served our turn. The more we tried to cheer his
solitude, the less encouragement we received. If we cared to call again
at Christmas, he hinted, we should be welcome, but not before. We
watched him go off bicycling alone in the red autumn afternoons. We saw
his light on half of the night; late as we were, he was always later;
and now he was never to be seen at all of a morning. But his grim eyes
had lost their light, his ruddy face had changed its shade, and erelong
I saw him reeling in broad daylight.

Coplestone had taken to the bottle--and as a strong man takes to
everything--without fear or shame. Yet somehow I felt it was for the
first time in his life; so did Delavoye, but on other grounds. I did not
believe he could have been the man he was when he came to us, if this
curse had ever descended on Coplestone before. Yet he seemed to take it
rather as a blessing, as a sudden discovery which he was a fool not to
have made before. This was no case of surreptitious, shamefaced
tippling; it was a cynically open and defiant downfall, at once an