Henry Tarrant was a bachelor and fiction-writing had confirmed him in the single state. The more he wrote about human beings the less he wanted to have anything to do with them. He had got them where he wanted them, and that was outside. Outside, they obeyed the rules—his rules. Critics had remarked on his aloofness, but it was perfectly in order for an artist to be aloof. A portrait-painter does not embrace his subject, at least he is under no obligation to; he stands away from it at whatever distance he finds convenient—in Henry’s case, the range of a good pair of field glasses. But when he peered into the distance, once so thickly populated with unprepossessing figures, he could see nothing.

An idea came into his mind. ‘I must provoke an incident,’ he thought; ‘I must provoke an incident.’ He did not know where the words came from—perhaps they were an echo from some old newspaper. Dictators provoked incidents. But his whole life—nearly forty years of it now—had been designed to keep incidents at bay. He had kept illness at bay, the war at bay, marriage at bay: he had kept life itself at bay. Only art had he welcomed; and now art had gone back on him.

So how could he provoke an incident—ridiculous phrase? He looked round the snug little room. The only incidents that ever occurred in it were breakages. Sometimes he broke a thing himself and then his housekeeper would say: ‘Well, sir, I’m glad it was you did it,’ and this annoyed him, but it did not constitute an incident in the literary sense. One cannot provoke an incident with oneself.

In a panic he snatched up his hat, mackintosh and stick and hurried out. A sense of dislocated routine oppressed him, as if he was wearing someone else’s clothes. The hour, six-thirty, was sacred to literary effort. The warm wet autumnal twilight wrapped him round. Which way? It didn’t matter which way; he chose the road between occasional bungalows that led towards the golf house. Suddenly he saw a dog was following him. He didn’t like dogs. ‘Go away!’ he said. But the animal wouldn’t go away: it trotted beside him with a proprietary air as if it had adopted him.

Presently it halted. ‘Good,’ thought Henry, and walked on, thankful to be relieved of this encumbrance. Then he saw, some way ahead, a lady also with a dog: she must be giving it an airing. He heard a scamper; the yellow dog tore past him and bore down on the lady’s dog. There was a moment’s parley between the two; then a scuffle; then the indescribable ear-piercing uproar of a dog fight.

‘Call off your dog, please, call off your dog!’ the lady shouted.

‘It isn’t my dog!’ Henry Tarrant replied.

‘Well, please do something,’ cried the lady, ‘or my dog will get murdered.’ She had no stick or whip, only a lead with which she was vainly thrashing the aggressor’s back.

No pepper-pot, no bucket of water. Henry paused a moment, then plunged into the mêlée of gleaming eyes and snapping teeth.

The yellow dog had got the spaniel down and was literally wiping the floor with it; the blows of Henry’s stick went off its back like water. Leaning down he seized it by the collar and lifted it into the air. It released the spaniel, wriggled round, and bit him to the bone. ‘Ow!’ he exclaimed and dropped the dog, which darted off into the gloom like the yellow streak it was.

Tall, dark and soft-featured, the lady bent over her pet. ‘Poor Sherry! Poor Sherry!’ she panted. The spaniel struggled to its feet and took some trial steps. She hadn’t noticed Henry’s hand. Better not tell her: let the incident be closed. But then she saw the blood flowing.

‘Oh, your poor hand!’

‘It’s nothing,’ said Henry, rather ungraciously.

‘But it is! You must put something on it at once. Have you anyone to do it for you?’

‘Well, no,’ said Henry, which was not quite true.

‘Then may I?’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Henry in a distant voice.

‘It’s the least I can do,’ the lady said. ‘Do you live near here?’

Unwillingly Henry pointed to his house.

‘Oh, then you’re Henry Tarrant—how exciting!’

But Henry didn’t ask the lady her name.

Later she said to him across the reassuring fumes of Dettol:

‘But I thought you never saw anyone!’

‘I don’t,’ said Henry, self-consciously.

‘But,’ she exclaimed inconsequently, ‘it’s such a pretty house!’

Henry Tarrant grunted. The basin was running with blood; the bathroom floor was splashed with blood; the towel was blood-stained. Blood everywhere: his blood. He felt absurdly proud of it. But the lady, following his eyes, suddenly realized the damage she had done, and was appalled. First she had wounded a writer and then wrecked his house. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, ‘how you must wish you had never met us!’

‘Not at all,’ said Henry. ‘It’s been a most rewarding experience.’

He meant it, but she scented sarcasm and shook her head. And there was worse to follow when they went downstairs. The incident had been too much for Henry’s nerves, as a large, dark, sullen pool on Henry’s best rug testified.

‘At least let me——’ she stammered.

‘We’ll do it together,’ Henry said.

If only he could tell her how much better he liked the house this way, fouled and blood-stained! But he couldn’t; he couldn’t pierce the shell of her shame and remorse. He felt that they were turning her against him.

‘Please stay and have a drink,’ he begged. ‘I have some sherry here—another kind of sherry,’ he added, nervously facetious.

But she was firm. She could hardly bring herself to speak to him.

‘Then I’ll see you to the door.’

In silence they went down the flagged path to the gate. He held out his left hand.

‘Good-bye,’ he said, ‘and thank you.’

Again she suspected sarcasm. ‘Good-bye,’ she said, and added with an effort, ‘I think I should keep that arm in a sling.’

‘How kind of you to think of it!’

She winced and did not answer. Henry opened the gate and there, waiting for them, its hackles rising, its teeth bared, its eyes ablaze as though it was a veritable hell-hound, stood the yellow dog. A deep growl came from its throat.

The lady screamed.

Henry hastily shut the gate. ‘Now you simply must come back!’ he said.

She heard the triumph in his voice and wonderingly followed him into the house.

W.S.

The first postcard came from Forfar. ‘I thought you might like a picture of Forfar,’ it said. ‘You have always been so interested in Scotland, and that is one reason why I am interested in you. I have enjoyed all your books, but do you really get to grips with people? I doubt it. Try to think of this as a handshake from your devoted admirer, W.S.’

Like other novelists, Walter Streeter was used to getting communications from strangers. Usually they were friendly but sometimes they were critical. In either case he always answered them, for he was conscientious. But answering them took up the time and energy he needed for his writing, so that he was rather relieved that W.S. had given no address. The photograph of Forfar was uninteresting and he tore it up. His anonymous correspondent’s criticism, however, lingered in his mind. Did he really fail to come to grips with his characters? Perhaps he did. He was aware that in most cases they were either projections of his own personality or, in different forms, the antithesis of it. The Me and the Not Me. Perhaps W.S. had spotted this. Not for the first time Walter made a vow to be more objective.

About ten days later arrived another postcard, this time from Berwick-on-Tweed. ‘What do you think of Berwick-on-Tweed?’ it said. ‘Like you, it’s on the Border. I hope this doesn’t sound rude. I don’t mean that you are a border-line case! You know how much I admire your stories. Some people call them other-worldly. I think you should plump for one world or the other. Another firm handshake from W.S.’