He stood there in the dusk of the little hall looking as resolute and
unconcerned as an Englishman, in a strange and uncertain world, is
expected to look. Not that he ever considered the attitudes fitting to
adopt on certain occasions. He would tell you, if you inquired, that "he
couldn't stand those fellows who looked into every glass they passed."
His brow wore now a simple and innocent frown like that of a healthy
baby presented for the first time with a strange and alarming rattle. It
was only later that I was to arrive at some faint conception of
Lawrence's marvellous acceptance of anything that might happen to turn
up. Vice, cruelty, unsuspected beauty, terror, remorse, hatred, and
ignorance--he accepted them all once they were there in front of him. He
sometimes, as I shall on a later occasion, show, allowed himself a free
expression of his views in the company of those whom he could trust, but
they were never the views of a suspicious or a disappointed man. It was
not that he had great faith in human nature. He had, I think, very
little. Nor was he without curiosity--far from it. But once a thing was
really there he wasted no time over exclamations as to the horror or
beauty or abomination of its actual presence. There was as he once
explained to me, "precious little time to waste." Those who thought him
a dull, silent fellow--and they were many--made of course an almost
ludicrous mistake, but most people in life are, I take it, too deeply
occupied with their own personal history to do more than estimate at its
surface value the appearance of others... but after all such a
dispensation makes, in all probability for the general happiness....

On this present occasion Jerry Lawrence stood there exactly as I had
seen him stand many times on the football field waiting for the
referee's whistle, his thick short body held together, his mouth shut
and his eyes on guard. He did not at first recognise me.