1
Ringstones
by Sarban
(John William Wall, 1910-1989)
I
The reason why I, and not Piers Debourg, have undertaken to write the introduction and conclusion to Daphne Hazel's story is that I possess a typewriter and Piers Debourg does not At least, that is the reason Piers gave for not doing it and it seemed cogent until the ache in my shoulder-blades made me examine his argument more critically. The real reason, I now suspect, is that if I had not done it, neither of the other two would, and I was sufficiently interested to want to see the story properly finished off, though insufficiently experienced to foresee the labour of it and, in fact, the impossibility of it. I discovered too late that I could not write the conclusion of the story; but still, I have for my pains a copy of Daphne Hazel's manuscript (Piers has kept the original) and the rest may pass as annotations of the text.
I had arranged by letter to spend the last few weeks of the Long Vacation in Northumberland or walking on the Border with Piers Debourg. He met me at the station and we went up to his suburb on the trolley-bus.
As we turned into Northumberland Street the broad sunlight blazed on the gilt of the only landmark I have in Newcastle.
"It always seems to me," said I, "one of the more whimsical eccentricities of the English character that this black, bleak city, this soul-constricting agglomeration of granite and grime, where the people seem to have been born with overcoats on their backs and Rechabitism in their hearts, should have erected for its tutelary deity a figure of Caligulan luxury: a naked, golden girl. I can never quite believe it. Does anyone else ever see it, I wonder? An