A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egbert’s Waste embrowned itself moment by moment. Oliver Barnes and Percival Grigsby struck a solemn vow by the riverside that meandered muddily through the Waste. It was a ramshackle affair, marked by smudged ink on a scrap of paper and sealed with handshakes sticky with mud and the slime of the eels they had caught that afternoon. “By our honour,” young Oliver declared, “we shall one day meet in London, each a man of triumph, to toast the success of the other!” Percival, ever the dreamer, nodded gravely.

Years swept them into different distributaries. Oliver, industrious and grim, found employ in a counting-house where ledgers consumed his days and ambition gnawed his nightly dreams. Percival, meanwhile, flitted from pursuit to pursuit, his heart too full of poetry to abide the cold calculus of industry.

By chance, or fate, the promise came back to Oliver on another dreary November afternoon. A child’s scrawl on yellowed paper emerged from the recess of a forgotten drawer. Guilt pricked him, for he had not seen Percival in over a decade. “The fool likely wanders penniless,” Oliver mused, yet his conscience compelled him to seek his old companion.

Their reunion, arranged by letter, was no grand affair. They met in a dim tavern near a rundown, little used dock, suspended above the mud of the great river, where Oliver found Percival shabby, but aglow with talk of unfulfilled plays and unpublished novels. “London, my friend,” Percival cried, “may have endampened my spirit, but not the flow of my pen!”

Oliver, burdened by his own dull success, scoffed. “And yet we toast nothing,” he said bitterly, ordering ale with the reluctance of a man tallying pennies.

“We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinner-time;” said Percival, sipping his ale, “we keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, ‘Oh, nothing!’ Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts.”

“Oh for goodness sake. You always were a hopeless case,” said Oliver, putting on his hat and heading for the door.

Thanks to Thomas Hardy and George Elliot.