“It is not as though Tom were a scholarly boy,” said Mrs. Kent-Cumberland to her friends. “I am glad he is not, of course. But if he had been, it might have been right to make the sacrifice and send him to the University. As it is, the sooner he Gets Started the better.”

Getting Tom started, however, proved a matter of some difficulty. During the Death Duty Period, Mrs. Kent-Cumberland had cut herself off from many of her friends. Now she cast round vainly to find someone who would “put Tom into something.” Chartered Accountancy, Chinese Customs, estate agencies, “the City,” were suggested and abandoned. “The trouble is, that he has no particular abilities,” she explained. “He is the sort of boy who would be useful in anything—an all-round man—but, of course, he has no capital.”

August, September, October passed; Gervase was back at Oxford, in fashionable lodgings in the High Street, but Tom remained at home without employment. Day by day he and his mother sat down together to luncheon and dinner, and his constant presence was a severe strain on Mrs. Kent-Cumberland’s equability. She herself was always busy and, as she bustled about her duties, it shocked and distracted her to encounter the large figure of her younger son sprawling on the morning room sofa or leaning against the stone parapet of the terrace and gazing out apathetically across the familiar landscape.

“Why can’t you find something to do?” she would complain. “There are always things to do about a house. Heaven knows I never have a moment.” And when, one afternoon, he was asked out by some neighbours and returned too late to dress for dinner, she said, “Really, Tom, I should have thought that you had time for that.”

“It is a very serious thing,” she remarked on another occasion, “for a young man of your age to get out of the habit of work. It saps his whole morale.”

Accordingly she fell back upon the ancient country house expedient of Cataloguing the Library. This consisted of an extensive and dusty collection of books amassed by succeeding generations of a family at no time notable for their patronage of literature; it had been catalogued before, in the middle of the nineteenth century, in the spidery, spinsterish hand of a relative in reduced circumstances; since then the additions and disturbances had been negligible, but Mrs. Kent-Cumberland purchased a fumed oak cabinet and several boxes of cards and instructed Tom how she wanted the shelves renumbered and the books twice entered under Subject and Author.

It was a system that should keep a boy employed for some time, and it was with vexation, therefore, that, a few days after the task was commenced, she paid a surprise visit to the scene of his labour and found Tom sitting, almost lying, in an armchair, with his feet on a rung of the library steps, reading.

“I am glad you have found something interesting,” she said in a voice that conveyed very little gladness.

“Well, to tell you the truth, I think I have,” said Tom, and showed her the book.

It was the manuscript journal kept by a Colonel Jasper Cumberland during the Peninsular War. It had no startling literary merit, nor did its criticisms of the general staff throw any new light upon the strategy of the campaign, but it was a lively, direct, day-to-day narrative, redolent of its period; there was a sprinkling of droll anecdotes, some vigorous descriptions of fox-hunting behind the lines of Torres Vedras, of the Duke of Wellington dining in Mess, of a threatened mutiny that had not yet found its way into history, of the assault on Badajos; there were some bawdy references to Portuguese women and some pious reflections about patriotism.

“I was wondering if it might be worth publishing,” said Tom.

“I should hardly think so,” replied his mother. “But I will certainly show it to Gervase when he comes home.”

For the moment the discovery gave a new interest to Tom’s life. He read up the history of the period and of his own family. Jasper Cumberland he established as a younger son of the period, who had later emigrated to Canada. There were letters from him among the archives, including the announcement of his marriage to a Papist which had clearly severed the link with his elder brother. In a case of uncatalogued miniatures in the long drawing room, he found the portrait of a handsome whiskered soldier, which by a study of contemporary uniforms he was able to identify as the diarist.

Presently, in his round, immature handwriting, Tom began working up his notes into an essay. His mother watched his efforts with unqualified approval. She was glad to see him busy, and glad to see him taking an interest in his family’s history. She had begun to fear that by sending him to a school without “tradition” she might have made a socialist of the boy. When, shortly before the Christmas vacation, work was found for Tom she took charge of his notes. “I am sure Gervase will be extremely interested,” she said. “He may even think it worth showing to a publisher.”

The work that had been found for Tom was not immediately lucrative, but, as his mother said, it was a Beginning. It was to go to Wolverhampton and learn the motor business from the bottom. The first two years were to be spent at the works, from where, if he showed talent, he might graduate to the London showrooms. His wages, at first, were thirty-five shillings a week. This was augmented by the allowance of another pound. Lodgings were found for him over a fruit shop in the outskirts of the town, and Gervase gave him his old two-seater car, in which he could travel to and from his work, and for occasional weekends home.

It was during one of these visits that Gervase told him the good news that a London publisher had read the diary and seen possibilities in it. Six months later it appeared under the title The Journal of an English Cavalry Officer during the Peninsular War. Edited with notes and a biographical introduction by Gervase Kent-Cumberland. The miniature portrait was prettily reproduced as a frontispiece, there was a collotype copy of a page of the original manuscript, a contemporary print of Tomb Park, and a map of the campaign. It sold nearly two thousand copies at twelve-and-sixpence and received two or three respectful reviews in the Saturday and Sunday papers.

The appearance of the Journal coincided within a few days with Gervase’s twenty-first birthday. The celebrations were extravagant and prolonged, culminating in a ball at which Tom’s attendance was required.

He drove over, after the works had shut down, and arrived, just in time for dinner, to find a house-party of thirty and a house entirely transformed.

His own room had been taken for a guest (“as you will only be here for one night,” his mother explained). He was sent down to the Cumberland Arms, where he dressed by candlelight in a breathless little bedroom over the bar, and arrived late and slightly dishevelled at dinner, where he sat between two lovely girls who neither knew who he was nor troubled to inquire. The dancing, afterwards, was in a marquee built on the terrace, which a London catering firm had converted into a fair replica of a Pont Street drawing room. Tom danced once or twice with the daughters of neighbouring families whom he had known since childhood. They asked him about Wolverhampton and the works. He had to get up early next morning; at midnight he slipped away to his bed at the inn. The evening had bored him; because he was in love.