The young are often accused of exaggerating their troubles; they do so, very often, in the hope of making some impression upon the inertia and the immovability of the selfish old. Solly’s writhings in his bonds were necessarily ineffective. A sense of duty and fear of a show-down with his mother kept him in check; it was unnecessary for her to take any countermeasures against the discontent which he could not always hide, because she held the purse-strings. His allowance was still, presumably, piling up in the bank at Cambridge, but at home he had nothing except for driblets of money which his mother handed to him now and then with the words, “You must have some little needs, lovey.”

Little needs! He needed freedom. He needed a profession at which he could support himself. He needed the love and reassurance of someone other than his mother. He needed someone to whom he could talk, without reserve, about the humiliating thralldom which she had imposed upon him since his thirteenth year. As he sat in his armchair, sipping his miserable drink, a few stinging tears of self-pity mounted to his eyes. Self-pity is commonly held to be despicable; it can also be a great comfort if it does not become chronic.

Griselda’s taunts had cut him sharply. It was all very well for her to imply that he was tied to his mother’s apron strings. But what did she know of his mother’s illness, and of the seriousness attached to it by Dr Collins? “Your mother must take things very gently; no upsets; you’re the apple of her eye, you know; you must cheer her up—try to take her out of herself.” It was a duty, a work of filial piety which his conscience would not permit him to evade, however distasteful it might sometimes be. How unfair it was of a girl to make no attempt to understand a man’s obligation to another woman whose very life might depend upon his tact and consideration! How hateful women were, and yet Griselda—how infinitely desirable! How could one who looked as she had looked tonight be as unreasonable and as wilfully cruel as she had been? He hated her, and even as he hated he was torn with love for her. There was only one thing for it; he must try to forget his wretchedness in some work.

It is a favourite notion of romantic young men that misery can be forgotten in work. If the work can be done late at night, all the better. And if the combination of misery and work can be brought together in an attic a very high degree of melancholy self-satisfaction may be achieved, for in spite of the supposed anti-romantic bias of our age the tradition of work, love, attics, drink and darkness is still powerful. The only real difficulty lies in balancing the level of the work against the level of the misery; at any moment the misery is likely to slop over into the work, and drown it.

This is what happened to Solly. He took up a copy of The Tempest in which he had already made a great many notes, and which was fat with bits of paper which he had thrust into it here and there, with what he believed to be good ideas for the production scribbled on them. But he could not read or think; the words blurred before his eyes, and he could see nothing but Griselda’s face—not pinched and angry, as when she had turned away from his kiss, but as it had been in the clubroom, when she had seemed to sleep through Roger Tasset’s reading. In a few minutes he gave up the struggle, and thought only of her. And as this palls upon even the most heart-sore lover, he went at last to bed.

For two weeks after Mr Webster had told him that the Little Theatre was going to invade his garden, nothing happened, and Tom began to deceive himself that perhaps nothing ever would happen. It is thus that a man who has been told by his physician that he has a dreadful disease seeks to persuade himself that the doctor was wrong. He feels nothing; he sees nothing amiss; little by little he thinks that there has been a mistaken diagnosis. But one day it strikes, and his agony is worse because he has cajoled himself with thought of escape. And thus it was with Tom. One morning, shortly after breakfast, a large truck drove across the upper lawn at St Agnes’, and with remarkable speed four men dug a great hole and planted a Hydro pole in it. When Tom rounded the house half an hour later they were busily setting up a transformer at the top of it.

“Who gave you leave to stick that thing up in my lawn?” roared Tom.

“Orders from the office, Pop,” said a young fellow at the top of the pole.

“Nobody said nothing to me about it,” shouted Tom. “Why didn’t you ask me to take up the sod before you began all this?”

“Never thought of it, Pop,” said the young man. “Don’t get your shirt in a knot. The grass’U grow again.”

“Not so much of your ‘Pop’, my boy,” said Tom, with dignity. “When I was in the Army I took the starch out of dozens like you.”

“That was cavalry days, Pop. Mechanized army now.”

“You come down here and get your bloody truck off my grass.”

“Who’s going to make me?”

“I know how to get a monkey out of a tree,” said Tom. He had a crowbar in his hand, and with this he deftly struck the base of the pole. The young man, whose climbing irons were stuck in the pole, got the full benefit of the vibration, and did not like it.

“Hey, go easy, Pop,” he shouted.

“You get your truck off my lawn,” said Tom.

The truck was backed away to the drive, and Tom felt that honour had been preserved. But he knew also that he was fighting a rearguard action. During the afternoon a party of soldiers arrived with another truck, which they drove on the grass, and under a corporal’s direction they set up two brown tents.

“What’s all this?” said Tom.

“For the Little Theayter,” said the corporal. “One tent for lights; the other for odds and ends. Major Pye’s orders, sergeant.”

Tom liked to be recognized as a sergeant in mufti, but he knew that after those tents had been up for three weeks he would never get the grass right that summer.

That evening two cars brought Mrs Forrester, Miss Rich, Professor Vambrace, Solly Bridgetower and Major Larry Pye to St Agnes’. They surveyed the pole and the tents with pleasure.

“It’s always a big thrill when a show begins to shape up, isn’t it Tom,” said Nellie.

Tom, who had been haunting the upper lawn in case new liberties should be taken with it, said that he didn’t know, never having had any experience with shows, but if his opinion was asked he thought that the pole and the tents looked a fair eyesore.

“Of course they do,” agreed Nellie. “But they won’t when you’ve planted some nice shrubs and little trees around them.”

“Maybe you’d like me to camoofladge this telegraph post as a tree, ma”am,” said Tom. But his sarcasm was wasted on Nellie.

“Oh, I didn’t know you could do that,” she said. “Of course that would be wonderful.”

“We don’t want to put you to extra work any more than is needful,” said Professor Vambrace, “but it will be necessary to give us some sort of raised stage. Something about two feet high, fifty feet across and thirty feet deep will be wanted, I should think. Can you do that with sod?”

“Now, now, let’s treat first things first,” said Major Pye. “I’m going to want a pit dug right in front of the acting area—not a big thing, but a pit about four feet deep, eight feet wide and four feet across, lined with waterproof cement.”

“Oh Larry, what for?” said Nellie.

“To put my controls in,” said Larry. That’s where I’ll be all through the show. I’ll have my board down there. And every change of light—bingo! Along comes the cue and I hit it right on the nose—bingo! You can put the prompter down there with me, if she doesn’t take too much room,” he added, magnanimously.

“And just when am I supposed to get all this done by?” said Tom.