The Dark Labyrinth Read Online Free PDF

anthology; and old Lord Alfred had once invited him to Hove where, he said, he would teach him the elements of the sonnet. It was rather condescending of him, really, but Graecen had thanked him profusely.
    â€œAh,” he said, for his eye, travelling slowly down the penultimate page had struck the title “England’s Cricketer-Poet”. There it was to be sure, written with all the overflowing admiration of old Conklin. He noted the usual references to his title, his scholarship, and his cricket. Conklin did not like his poets effeminate. With a certain indignation, however, he read: “It has become increasingly clear that a new Gordon Bottomley is amongst us. Lord Graecen is definitely in the great tradition of Lord Alfred Douglas, Roland Tuft, Canon Alec Smudge, and Loyola Tipstaff, any of whose lines are worth a bookful of today’s harsh clangour, which, to the uninformed, passes for poetry.” Graecen made an irritated gesture in the air and spilt some butter on his tie. “Here!” he said plaintively, addressing Conklin, “you can’t say that.” It was obviously crass. One hated adverse criticism—but could one bear to be damned by this sort of praise? He read on, however, with growing bitterness.
    The bell on the outside door clinked and he saw Hogarth enter, stooping low in his baggy grey trousers, his arms full of books. “Hogarth,” he said delightedly, “Hogarth.” The newcomer lowered his grizzled taurine head and started towards him, with all the caution of a big man who fears that he will overturn something. “Well,” he said, “I was thinking about you—wondering why you hadn’t rung me up.” Graecen was childishly delighted to see his old friend. “Sit down, my dear fellow,” he said. “It’s very nice—dear me—very nice indeed.”
    Hogarth sat down slowly, battling, it seemed, with something like the centrifugal force, and unloaded his books on to the table, placing his stained pork-pie hat on top of them. He regarded Graecen with sardonic affection. His small keen eyes took in Graecen’s appearance: the buttered toast in one hand, the handkerchief in the other, the book open on his knee. “Richard,” he said sternly, “you are reading your own work again.” Graecen blushed like a girl. Hogarth always adopted a tone of savage irony for the sheer pleasure of teasing him.
    To do him justice, Graecen’s character demanded something more barbed than the conventional responses; and Hogarth, whose dominant character was almost the exact antithesis of his, found himself to be almost complementary in feeling and outlook. They got on admirably; fulfilling indeed Hogarth’s theory of psychic union between two essentially polar types. He had named them “dominant” and “recessive”.
    He sat now, regarding his thumbs for a moment, and got his breath. It was obvious that he was a little out of breath. Graecen cherished him with his glances, for he had not seen Hogarth for several weeks. The familiarity of the picture pleased him. Hogarth’s large shoulders were clad in an old tweed coat patched with leather at the elbows. His grey trousers had shrunk in the wash, and their nether ends exposed his thick ankles whose socks hung down about his shoes. His face was like one of those carved Austrian pipe-heads—large bony features which were only kept alive by the small pointed eagerness of his eyes. They were rather fine and changed their colour, the eyes; they were engaged on a perpetual enquiry. When Hogarth laughed they disappeared into small commas like the eyes of pigs. When he opened them very wide, as he did when there was a question to ask, they seemed to become younger, to shine with a beauty and candour of their own.
    â€œWell,” he said, ordering tea, and starting to charge his great blockish pipe with tobacco, “I’ve been running to get