Talbot Baines Reed

A Dog With a Bad Name

The Boy's Own Paper, 1913.

His steps lead him round [Regent's Park] and into the long avenue. The rain and the wind are dying down, and already a few wayfarers, surprised by the sudden storm, are emerging from their shelters and speeding home...And there, coming to meet him, sheltered under one umbrella, are two who perhaps have no grudge against the storm for detaining them in their walk that afternoon... They meet - the tramp and the young couple. They never heed him; how should they? But a turn of the umbrella gives him a momentary glimpse...

Down on his luck, the sight of two figures from Jeffreys's past brings back bitter memories. 'How long he stood, statue-like, looking down the path by which they had gone neither he nor any one else could tell.' The park closes but he lingers in the area, unwilling to leave. 'The noisy streets had grown silent, and a clock near at hand had struck two when he found himself on the little bridge which crosses the canal.' Here he encounters another outcast. 'Jeffreys had seen misery in many forms go past him before, but something impelled him now to rise and follow the footsteps of this wanderer.'

Weak and weary as he was

He 'can't keep pace with the figure flitting before him,' who soon disappears from sight. 'The sullen water, hissing still under the heavy rain, gave no sign as he ran along its edge and scanned it with anxious eyes. The high bank on his left, beyond the palings, became inaccessible from below. The wanderer must, therefore, be before him on the path. For five minutes he ran on, straining his eyes and ears, when suddenly he stumbled. It was a hat upon the path'.

The would-be suicide turns out to be another figure from the past; it's 'a turning point in his life,' and now Jeffreys's fortunes start to mend. The park provides the venue for a reunion with his beloved, but not before the lady has to send an unwelcome admirer packing.