William Olaf Stapledon

A Man Divided William Olaf Stapledon

1921VICTOR HAD REFUSED his bride at the altar! That was the brute fact which agitated the little party in the vestry. No amount of explanation could mitigate it. As best man I had been in a good position to observe events; and even I, who had formerly been fairly intimate with Victor, was completely taken by surprise. True, I had long suspected that there was something queer about him; but up to the very moment of his quietly shattering remark, as he put the ring into his pocket, I had no idea that anything serious was amiss. James Victor Cadogan-Smith, later to be known as plain Victor Smith, had seemed the ideal bridegroom. He was the son of a successful colonial administrator who had climbed by his own ability from a very lowly position, and had recently acquired a knighthood. The family had been humble "Smiths" until Victor's father had married the only child of a more aristocratic family, and had agreed to splice his wife's name to his own. The new "Cadogan-Smith" assured his friends that he had done this mainly to please his father-in-law. But in later life he used to say, "In those days my snobbery was unconscious."