“You called it something,” said I; “a trifle of something?”

“Oh, anitergium,” said Adrian. “It’s just one of those Middle Latin terms I like to use for fun. It means a trifle, a sketch, something disposable. Well, actually the monks used it for the throw-outs from the scriptorium which they used for bum-wipe.”

I hated to hurt his feelings, but Pargetter always said that hard things should be said as briefly as possible.

“It’s bum-wipe, all right,” I said. “Father won’t have that.”

“Oh, most certainly not. I never meant that he should. The College of Heralds would have to prepare you legitimate arms, and I don’t suppose it would be anything like this.”

“I don’t mean the anitergium,” I said. “I mean the whole story.”

“But Davey! You told me yourself your father said you were probably bastards. He must have a sturdy sense of humour.”

“He has,” I said, “but I doubt if it extends to this. However, I’ll try it.”

I did. And I was right. His letter in reply was cold and brief. “People talk jokingly about being bastards, but the reality is something different. Remember that I am in politics now and you can imagine the fun my opponents would have. Let us drop the whole thing. Pay off Pledger-Brown and tell him to keep his trap shut.”

And that, for a while, was that.

(13)

I suppose nobody nowadays gets through a university without some flirtation with politics, and quite a few lasting marriages result. I had my spell of socialism, but it was measles rather than scarlet fever, and I soon recovered; as a student of law, I was aware that in our time whatever a man’s political convictions may be he lives under a socialist system. Furthermore, I knew that my concern for mankind disposed me toward individuals rather than masses, and as Pargetter was pushing me toward work in the courts, and especially toward criminal law, I was increasingly interested in a class of society for which no political party has any use. There was, Pargetter said, somewhat less than five per cent of society which could fittingly be called the criminal class. That five per cent were my constituents.

I got my First Class in law at Oxford, and was in time called to the Bar in London, but I had always intended to practise in Canada, and this involved me in three more years of work. Canadian law, though rooted in English law, is not precisely the same, and the differences, and a certain amount of professional protectionism, made it necessary for me to qualify all over again. It was not hard. I was already pretty good and was able to do the Canadian work with time to spare for other reading. Like many well-qualified professional men I knew very little but my job, and Pargetter was very severe on that kind of ignorance. “ ‘If practice be the whole that he is taught, practice must also be the whole that he will ever know,’ ” he would quote from Blackstone. So I read a lot of history, as my schoolwork with Ramsay had given me a turn in that direction, and quite a few great classical works which have formed the minds of men for generations, and of which I retain nothing but a vague sense of how long they were and how clever people must be who liked them. What I really liked was poetry, and I read a lot of it.