Erle Cox

The Missing Angel Erle Cox

A biographical introduction to a story is always boring, but I cannot help that. You must know how Tydvil was brought up or it will be impossible to understand him. When you know he began life with a handicap that not one man in a million could carry to the winning post you will recognise that he might have been much worse than he was. To begin with Tydvil was an only child. His father was middle-aged when Tydvil arrived, and was a man deeply absorbed in his business. His mother was a woman of iron will and an ultra pious disposition. That she insisted on calling her son Tydvil because his father had been born in Merthyr Tydvil, and had her way, is one proof of the inflexibility of her purpose. It was the boy's good luck that with his mother's will he inherited the business ability of his father. As there was not room in one family for two will-powers such as her own, Mrs. Jones, senior, did her best to eradicate that of her son in his infancy; but never recognised that, though suppressed, it remained latent. Now, Mrs. Jones as the moving spirit in half a dozen societies for the moral improvement of everybody and everything, obtained an insight into aspects of life that are usually kept decently covered up. Not being as wise as she believed herself to be, and seeing results without understanding causes, she was firmly convinced that all men were brutes. She asserted her belief so often that the natural brutality of man became the basic axiom of her life.