ROBIN PIERCE and Carey were old acquaintances, if not exactly old
friends. They had been for a time at Harrow together. Pierce had six
thousand a year and worked hard for a few hundreds. Carey had a thousand
and did nothing. He had never done anything definite, anything to earn a
living. Yet his talents were notorious. He played the piano well for an
amateur, was an extraordinarily clever mimic, acted better than most
people who were not on the stage, and could write very entertaining verse
with a pungent, sub-acid flavour. But he had no creative power and no
perseverance. As a critic of the performances of others he was cruel but
discerning, giving no quarter, but giving credit where it was due. He
loathed a bad workman more than a criminal, and would rather have crushed
an incompetent human being than a worm. Secretly he despised himself. His
own laziness was as disgusting to him as a disease, and was as incurable
as are certain diseases. He was now thirty-four and realised that he was
never going to do anything with his life. Already he had travelled over
the world, seen a hundred, done a hundred things. He had an enormous
acquaintance in Society and among artists; writers, actors, painters--all
the people who did things and did them well. As a rule they liked him,
despite his bizarre bluntness of speech and manner, and they invariably
spoke of him as a man of great talent; he said because he was so seldom
fool enough to do anything that could reveal incompetence. His mother,
who was a widow, lived in the north, in an old family mansion, half
house, half castle, near the sea coast of Cumberland. He had one sister,
who was married to an American.

Carey always declared that he was that /rara avis/ an atheist, and that
he had been born an atheist. He affirmed that even when a child he had
never, for a moment, felt that there could be any other life than this
earth-life. Few people believed him. There are few people who can believe
in a child atheist.