If you had been standing on a certain cold night in January opposite the great building where The Day is jewelled in electric lights across the dark sky, you would have seen a little, stout man run down the steps of the entrance at the side, three at a time, land on the pavement as if he were preparing to leap the roadway, with the sheer impetus of the flight of steps behind him, and had suddenly thought better of it, glance hurriedly at the big, lighted clock whose hands, formed of the letters T-H-E D-A-Y, in red and green electric lights, showed that it was nearly half-past twelve, and suddenly start off in a terrible hurry towards Chancery Lane, as though pursued by some awful thing. Considering the bulkiness of the little man, he ran remarkably well. He dodged a light newspaper van that was coming recklessly round Fetter Lane, for there was none of the crowded traffic of daylight to be negotiated, and then, he turned the corner of Chancery Lane—and there you would have seen the last of him. He would have vanished from your life, a stumpy little man, with an umbrella popped under one arm, a bundle of papers grasped in his hand, a hat jammed down on The sight of a man running, even in these days when life itself goes with a rush, is sufficient to awaken comment in the mind of the onlooker. It suggests pursuit, the recklessness of other days; it impels, instinctively, the cry of "Stop, thief," for no man runs unless he is hunted by a powerful motive. Therefore it may be assumed that since I have sent a man bolting hard out of your sight up the lamp-lit avenue of Chancery Lane, you are wondering why the devil he's in such a hurry. Well, he was hurrying because the last train to Shepherd's Bush goes at 12.35, and, as he had been away from home since ten o'clock that morning, he was rather anxious to get back. He could not afford a cab fare, though only a few hours ago he had been eating oysters, bisque soup, turbot, pheasant, asparagus out of season and pÊche Melba at the Savoy Hotel with eighteenpence in his pocket—and the odd pence had gone to the waiter and the cloakroom man. So that by the time he had reached the top of Chancery Lane, dashed across the road and through the door of the station, where a porter would have slammed the grille in another second, and bought his ticket with an explosive, panting "Bush," he had just tenpence left. The lift-man knew him, nodded affably and said: "Just in time, Mr Pride." "A hard run," said Mr Pride; and then with a cheery smile, "never mind; good for the liver." There were only a few people in the lift—four men and a woman to be precise. He knew the men as casual acquaintances of the last tube train. There was Denning, a sporting sub-editor on The Lantern; another was a proof-reader on one of the afternoon papers, who finished As the lift went down, its high complaining noise falling to a low buzzing sound seemed like the tired murmur of a weary human being glad that rest had come at last. The sound of the approaching train came rolling through the tunnel. They all rushed desperately down the short flight of steps that led to the platform, as the train came in with a rattle of doors opening and slamming, and scrambled for seats, while the uniformed men, who appeared to be the only thoroughly wide-awake people in the neighbourhood, said in the most contradictory fashion: "Stand clear of the gates," "Hurry on, please," and "Passengers off first." Pride found himself in the smoking carriage, opposite Harlem, with his young friend at his side. It never occurred to him that there was anything exceptional in his dash for the last train. He did it four nights out of the week, as a matter of course. He was fifty years old, though he pretended he was ten years younger, and shaved his face clean to keep up the illusion. He used to explain to his friends that he came of a family famous for baldness in early years. "Been busy?" asked Harlem, filling his pipe. "Nothing to speak of," said Pride. "Turned up at Pride filled his own pipe, and sighed. "The old days are over!" he said. "They used to post our assignments overnight—'Dear Mr Pride, kindly do a quarter of a column of the enclosed meeting.' Why, The Sentinel used to allow us five shillings every time we put on evening dress." "Well, The Sentinel was a pretty dull paper before the Kelmscotts bought it and turned it into a halfpenny," said Harlem. "Look at it now, a nice, bright paper—oh, by the way, do you know Cannock," he jerked his head to the man at his side. "He's The Sentinel's latest acquisition. This is Tommy Pride, one of the ancient bulwarks of The Sentinel, until they fired him. Now he's learning to be a halfpenny journalist." Pride looked at the young man. "I don't know about being the latest acquisition," Cannock said. "As a matter of fact, they've fired me to-day." "It's a hobby of theirs now," Harlem remarked. "You'll get a job on The Day if you ask for one. There's always room with us, ain't there, Tommy?" Pride looked wistfully at the clouds of blue smoke that rose from his lips.... Yes, he thought, there was always room on The Day—at any moment they might decide to make alterations in the staff. The fact "Married?" asked Pride. "Not me!" replied Cannock, with a slight hiccough. "Well, you're all right. You can free-lance if you want to." "Oh, it's no good to me," Cannock said. "It's a dog's life anyhow, and I've only had two months of it. I'm going back to my guv'nor's business." "Ah," said Pride, "there's no use wasting sympathy on you. Why did you ever leave it? What's his business?" "That," Cannock laughed gaily and pointed to a poster as the train stopped at Tottenham Court Road Station. It was a great picture of barrels and barrels of beer, piled one above the other, reaching away into the far distance. Thousands of barrels under a vaulted roof. And in the foreground were little figures of men in white aprons with red jersey caps on their heads, rolling in more barrels, with their arms bared to the elbows. Across the picture in large letters Pride could read: "Cannock Brothers, Holloway. Cannock's Entire." "Why, your people are worth millions!" Pride said. "What on earth are you doing in journalism." "I know they are. That's what I was thinking of yesterday. I wondered how on earth they got anybody to do the work." "Well, you won't mind me, I'm sure," Pride said, leaning over to Cannock. "I'm older than you, and I belong to what they call the old school of journalism. This isn't the lovely life some people think it must be, and it's going to get worse each year. We've got to fight for our jobs every day of our life. 'Making good,' they call it. I'm used to it," he said defiantly, looking at Harlem, "I like it.... I couldn't do anything else. I'm not fit for anything else. It has its lazy moments, too, and its moments of excitement and thrills. No, my son, you go back to the brewery, there's more money in it for you and all the glory you want with your name plastered over every bottle and on all the walls. Ask five hundred men in the street if they've ever heard of Tommy Pride. They've been reading things I've written every day, but they don't know who's written them. Ask 'em who's Cannock? Why, they'll turn mechanically into the nearest public-house and call for a bottle of you." "I used to think it would be jolly to be on a newspaper," Cannock said. "My guv'nor got me the job. He's something to do with the Kelmscotts." "So it is if you're meant to be on a newspaper. That's the trouble of fellows like you. You come out of nowhere, or from the 'Varsity, and get plunked right down in the heart of a London newspaper office—probably someone's fired to make room for you. You're friends of the editor and you think you're great men, until you find you're expected to take your turn with the rest. Then you grouse, because you're not meant for it. You've got appointments to keep at dinner-time, and you must get your meals regularly. Or you He saw that Cannock was smiling, and seemed to read his thoughts. "Me?" he said. "Oh, you mustn't judge by me. I belong to the old school, you know. I'm the son of my father—he was a Gallery man, and died worth three hundred pounds, and that's more than I am. I'm one of the products of the last generation, and all I want is £2 a week and a cottage in the country." The little man relit his pipe, and puffed contentedly. "Lord! I should like that!" he said. "You're always frightened of being fired, Tommy," said Harlem. "You know well enough you're what we call a thoroughly reliable and experienced man, and Ferrol wouldn't have you sacked." "There's always that bogy," Pride answered with a laugh. "You never know what may happen. The only thing is to join the Newspaper Press Fund and trust in the Lord. None of the youngsters do either of these things to-day." Cannock and Harlem prepared to leave as the train slowed down before Marble Arch. "It's a rotten game," said Cannock. "I'm glad I'm out of it. Good-bye." Pride took his hand. "Good-bye." He saw them pass the window, and wave to him as they went under the lighted "Way Out" sign, and then he turned to his papers with a sigh. But somehow or other he did not He was thinking of Cannock, with his future all clear before him: Cannock, with beer woven into the fibre of his being, as news was in his. It must be rather fine to be independent like that.... Idly, he wondered what Cannock's guv'nor was like: did he admire these pictures of the vast hall crowded with beer barrels, enough to last London for a whole Saturday night, and ready to be filled up again for all the nights in the week.... He looked round the carriage at the faces of those who were travelling with him. Five boisterous young people were making themselves a noisy nuisance at one end of the carriage. Opposite him, in the seat lately occupied by Harlem, a working man was staring ahead of him with an empty wide stare as if, in a moment of absent-mindedness, his actual self had slipped away, and left a hulk of shabbily-clothed body, without a spark of intelligence. Others were nodding, half asleep, and there was one man, with closed eyes, and parted lips, breathing stertorously, whose head bobbled from side to side with the rocking of the Tommy Pride always gave his papers to the lift-man. They waited for the last passenger, who came lurching round the corner with his head still bobbling and his eyes half lost below the drooping eyelids. He steadied himself against the wall—and his hand spread over another of those glorious posters. What a picture for Cannock!... Somehow, Pride rejoiced to think that he was not Cannock. He went past the Green to one of the small houses in a turning off the Uxbridge Road. The moon shone out of the wintry sky, white and placid, above his home. He let himself in, and turned out the flicker of gas in the hall. He walked on tiptoe into the sitting-room, and having taken off his boots went to the fireplace. Here on a trivet he found a cup of cocoa, and his slippers warming before the fire. There were three slices of thin bread and butter on the table. He never went to bed without his bread and butter. During his meal he saw a copy of The Day on a chair, and he read bits of it mechanically, for he had read it all before. The clock struck one, and he bolted the front door and went softly upstairs. As he turned on the light his wife stirred uneasily, and he came to the bedside. She opened her eyes at his kiss, and smiled tenderly at him. "Is it very late, dear?" she asked. "One o'clock." "Poor sweetheart!" she murmured. "Did you have your cocoa?" "Yes," he said. "Tired?" He laughed. "Not very. I'm a bit cheerful, to tell you the truth. Tell you about it in the morning. Ferrol spoke to me to-day. He's a fine chap." That was the magic of it! Ferrol had spoken to him. The conversation had been quite ordinary. "Well, Pride, I hope things are going all right?" And Ferrol had nodded cheerfully and smiled as he passed into his room. Perhaps, he had asked Pride to come and see him.... It was not what Ferrol said that mattered: it was the Idea behind it—that Ferrol knew and remembered his men individually. Out of the insensate tangle of machines and lives, high above the thunderous clamour of the printing-presses, the rolling of heavy vans stacked high with cylinders of paper, the ringing of telephone bells, the ticking and clicking and buzzing, floor above floor, of the great grey building in which they all lived, Ferrol rises with his masterful personality and calm voice, carving the chaos of it all into discipline and order. He looms, in the imagination, powerful and omnipresent, making his desires felt in the far corners of the continents. Ferrol whispered, and Berlin, Vienna or San Francisco gave him his needs. He was the brain and the heart of the body he had created, and his nerves and his arteries were spread over the earth. He placed his fingers on the pulse of mankind, and knew what was ailing—knew what it wanted, and found the specialist to attend to it. His influence lay over the narrow street of tall buildings, urging men onwards and upwards with the gospel of great endeavour. Some men, as their pagan ancestors worshipped the Sun as the God of Light, placed him on a pedestal in their hearts, and bowed down to him as the God of Success, for the energy of his spirit was everywhere. If you searched behind the ponderous double octuple machines, rattling and thudding, and driving the work of their world forward, you would have found it there—the motive power of the whole. It lurked in the tap-tap of the telegraph transmitter, in the quick click of the type in the slots of the linotype machines as the aproned operators touched the keyboard; it was in the heart of the reporter groping through the day for facts, and writing them with the shadow of Ferrol falling across the paper. The clerks in the counting-house, the advertising men, the grimy printers' boys in the basement, the type-setters and the block-makers on the top floors near the skylights, messengers, typists—they were all bricks in the edifice which was built up for the men who wrote the paper—the edifice of which Ferrol was the keystone. His enemies distorted the vision of him; they saw him, an inhuman, incredible monster, with neither soul nor heart, grimly eager for one end—the making of money. They wrote of him as an evil thing, brooding over sensationalism.... One must see him as Tommy Pride and all those who worked for him on The Day saw him, eager, keen, and large-hearted, a wonderful blend of sentiment and business, torn, sometimes, between expediency and the hidden desires of his heart. One must see him reckless and, since he was only human, making mistakes, creating, destroying, living only for what the day brought forth.... The spirit of Fleet Street, itself. Like a silver thread woven into the texture of his character, in which good and evil were patterned as they are in most men, a streak of the sentimental was there, shining untarnished, a survival of his days of young romance. Very few people knew of this trait; Ferrol hugged it to himself secretly, as though it were a weakness of which he was ashamed. It came upon him at odd, unexpected moments when he was hemmed in by the gross materialism of every day, this passionate, sudden yearning for poetry and ideals. He would try to lift the latch of the door that had locked the world of beauty and art from him. Swift desires would seize him to be carried away in his motor-car, as if it were a magic carpet, to some Arcadia of dreaming shadows, with the sunlight splashing through the green roofs of the forests. The sentimental in him would, at such times, find expression in many ways. He made extravagant gifts to people; he would take a sudden interest in the career of one man, and bring all that man's longings to realization by lifting him up and making his name. How glorious that power was to Ferrol! The power of singling men out, finding the spark of genius that he could raise to a steady flame, fanning it with opportunity; he could make a man suddenly rich with a stroke of his pen; pack him off to Arabia or South America and bid him write his best. Sometimes they failed, because it was not in them to succeed, and Ferrol was as merciless to failures as he was generous to those who won through. The men he made!... Sometimes, when the waves of sentiment swept over him, he would try and materialize his ideals for a time. And now the fit was on Ferrol as he sat in his room with the crimson carpet and the dark red walls, hung with contents bills of The Day. He had been going over the morning letters with his secretary, listening to the applications for employment. He made a point of hearing them, now and again. There was one letter there that suddenly awoke his interest; the name touched a chord in his memory, a chord that responded with a low, tender note.... And, his mind marched back through the corridors of the past, until he came out upon the old, quiet, cathedral town of the days of his youth. He saw himself, a slight, eager young man, long, long before his dreams of greatness came to pass, yet feeling in his heart that the plans he was making would be followed. A young Ferrol plotting within himself to wrest spoils from the world, longing intolerably for power and the wealth that could give it. Well did he know, even in those far-off days, that destiny was holding out her hands, laden with roses and prizes for him.... Those were the days of the young heart; the days of nineteen and twenty, and the first love, scarce understood, that comes to us, mysterious and beautiful. He saw a very different Ferrol then. The lip unshaven, that was now hidden with a bushy moustache turning grey; the hair, now also grey under the Over the abyss of the years the boy beckoned to him, and Ferrol looked back on a yesterday of thirty years. Her name was Margaret, and she was for him the beginning of things. From her he learned much of the tenderness of life, and the love of Nature that had remained with him. He was a clerk in an auctioneer's office then, with most of his dreams still undreamt. He and Margaret had been children together. They were children now, laughing, and walking over the fields with the spire of the cathedral, pointing like a finger to the skies, in the distant haze of the afternoon. There was more purity in that first romance of his than in anything he had found in after years. Oh! wonderful days of young unsullied hearts, and the white innocence of life. The memory of evenings came to him, of kisses in the starlight, when incomprehensible emotions surged through him, vague imaginings of what life must really be, and the torture of unrest, of something that he did not understand. Her eyes were tearful, and yet she smiled, and at her smile they both laughed. And so the spell was broken, and they trudged, side by side, homeward in the silent night. She inspired him, and in that, perhaps, she fulfilled her destiny. She sowed the seeds of ambition in his soul: he would dare anything for her, yea, reach his hand upwards, and pluck the very stars from Heaven to lay at her feet. And, very gradually, a dreadful nausea of Easterham came over him. His desk was by the window that looked upon the High Street: he almost remembered, now, the day when it first dawned on him that the place was no longer tolerable. It was The nostalgia grew. The chimes of the cathedral lost their music, the stillness of the town became more unbearable than the turmoil and clatter of cities. There was something to be wrought for and fought for in the world outside. This was not life; this was a mausoleum! The arguments with his father—his mother was dead—and the long time it took to persuade him.... The parting with Margaret, and the whispered vows and promises, spoken breathlessly from their earnest young hearts. It seemed they could never be broken. He came to London. It was in the late seventies, at the beginning of the spread of education that has resulted in the amazing flood of periodicals: it was a And Margaret...? The years passed, and with the passing of time, they both developed. That young love, once so irrefrangible, grew warped and misshapen, until it finally snapped. There was no quarrel; neither could reproach the other; they simply grew out of their love, as so many young people do. There was a correspondence for a time, but it slackened and presently ceased altogether. She must have felt her hold loosening on Ferrol, as with a thousand new interests he came upon the wide horizon of life. She must have noticed this in his letters, and instead of seeking to bind him to her against his will, she just let him go. And Ferrol must have weighed the impossibility of asking her to marry him at this point of his career, when he was striving and struggling upwards; not all men travel the fastest when they travel alone, but Ferrol was one of those who could run no risk of being delayed. They had none of the pang of parting ... but years afterwards, when Ferrol was a childless widower (for he married when he was thirty-five, and walked behind his wife's coffin two years afterwards), he wondered what had become of Margaret, and always he cherished that memory of his one romance that had tapered away out of his life. He could never forget the sweet simplicity He remembered one day in his life, a few years after the death of his wife, when a wild desire had seized him to handle his past again, as an antiquarian turns over his treasures and rejoices in some ancient relic. It was a day in summer, when the heat was heavy over London, and the city smelt of hot asphalt and tar: without a word to anybody he had left his work and taken the train, back to Easterham and his youth. The old familiar landmarks rose up before him, bringing a strange feeling of age to him. So much had happened in the interval that it seemed that year upon year had piled up a wall before him, separating him for evermore from this old world that had been. The ivy still clung to the castellated walls of the Cathedral close; the clock chimed as he went by, just as he had heard it chime in the long days that were gone. The very rooks seemed unchanged as they clamoured huskily in the old beeches. And yet, with it all, there was something different, and he knew that the difference lay not so much with the place as with himself. His entire perception had altered. He saw things through eyes that had grown older. The High Street, with its brooding air of stillness, that had once seemed so stale and intolerable to him, now appealed to him with its wondrous peace, a magical spot far away from the turmoil of things. There were the same names over the grocers' and the drapers' and the ironmongers' shops, but old Matthew Bethell's quaint bookshop had gone, and in its place there stood a large green, flat-fronted establishment, The Day. ONE HALFPENNY HOWARD SLANDER CASE. FULL REPORT. The sentimental in him winced, but the material business man glowed with pride as he saw the great poster, proclaiming The Day paramount over its rivals. There was always a conflict between the two men that made up that complex personality known as Ferrol. He went to the house where he had once lived; his father was dead now, and as he looked up at the open window and saw a strange woman doing some needle-work, it seemed to him as if the people that were living there had laid sacrilegious hands upon the holy fragrance of the past; as if their prying eyes had peered into all the hidden secrets that belonged to him. He turned away resentfully towards the old inn, the Red Lion, whose proprietor, old Hamblin, remembered him from other days when he revealed himself, and was inclined to be overcome with the importance of the visit, until Ferrol put him at his ease. They chatted together, the They talked of people they had known, and so the talk came naturally to Margaret. He listened unmoved to the news of her marriage, and found that nothing more than conventional phrases came from his lips when Hamblin told him of her death. Somehow, it seemed to him so natural. He had been away seventeen years, and Easterham had lost its hold upon him now. The death of his father ... the new face at the window of their house.... The death of Margaret seemed to come as a natural sequence to things. Hamblin went on talking about people. "She married Mr Quain, one of the College schoolmasters.... I expect he was after your time ... a good deal older than you, Mr Ferrol.... They had one child, a boy ... living with his aunt now. All her people left Easterham years ago...." And so on. It was in the afternoon that Ferrol came back to London, feeling that he had been prodding at wet moss-grown stones in some old decayed ruin, turning them over to see what he could find, and having them crumble apart in his hands. He never went back again. That was thirteen years ago. Ferrol's memories ended abruptly. He touched a button, and a young man, with a shiny, pink face and fair hair parted in the middle, came in with a notebook and pencil in his hand. He looked as if he spent every moment of his "Trinder," he said, "there was a letter among the lot to-day. Quain. Written on Easterham Gazette notepaper. Asking for editorial employment." "Yes, sir." Trinder had long ceased to marvel at Ferrol's memory for details. "Write to him the usual letter asking him to call. Wednesday at twelve." Trinder made a note and withdrew. Ferrol wondered what Margaret's boy was like. At the age of twenty Humphrey Quain found himself on the threshold of a world of promise. It seemed to him that if, out of all the years of time, he could have chosen the period in which he would live, he would have picked out the dawn of this twentieth century of grace. England was just then in the throes of casting from herself the burden of old traditions. The closing years of the nineties had been years of preparation and development—years of broadening minds and new ideas, until quite suddenly, it seemed, the century turned the corner, and yesterday became old-fashioned in a day, and all eyes were fixed on the glorious sunrise of the twentieth century—the wonderful century. People, you remember, played with the fantasy of beginning a brand-new century as if it were a new toy. Nobody who was living could remember the birth of the last century. It was a new emotion for everyone. There was the oddity of writing dates, discarding for ever the 189— and beginning with 19—; old phrases, such as fin-de-siÈcle, became suddenly obsolete; new phrases were coined, among which "Twencent" (an abbreviation for twentieth century, and a tribute to the snap and hustle with which the world was now expected to go) survived the longest; songs were sung at music-halls; there was a burst of cartoons on the subject; people referred jokingly to the last century, parodying the recollections of boresome centenarians; while the unhappy Nineteenth Century, as though the calendar In the midst of this change, when the death of Queen Victoria seemed to snap the present from the past irrevocably, and the novelty of a king came to England again; when the first of the tubes that now honeycomb London was a twopenny wonder, and people were talking of Shepherd's Bush, and Notting Hill Gate, and marvelling curiously why they had never talked of them before; when Socialism was burrowing and gnawing like a rat at the old, worn fabric of Society, urging the working-man to stand equal in Parliament with the noblest lords in the land. In the midst of all this there arose suddenly, born with the twentieth century, the Young Man. He had already come, answering the call of the country in the dark disillusioning days of the Boer War. People had seen the young clerks and workmen of England marching shoulder to shoulder down the streets of London, like the train-bands of Elizabethan days. When the country was in peril the flower and the youth of England came to its aid, and the older men could do nothing but stay at home and look on. The young man, scorned by his elders in all the periods of the nineteenth century except those last years of development, found himself suddenly caught up on the high wave that was sweeping away the rubbish and the sentiment and the lumber of the old customs, and borne above them all. He was set on a pinnacle, as the new type; the future of the world was said to be in the hands of the young men; the old men—even forty was too old, you remember—had It really was a wonderful time for the Young Man. In the old days it had been customary for him to show respect to his elders, to call them "sir," to stand up when they came into a room, or raise his hat if they met in the streets, to offer his seat to them if there was none vacant, and generally to treat them as old ladies, with polite reverence mingled with awe. The worship of age had become a fetish; it was improper to criticize the opinions of a man older than yourself; it was heresy to think that you were as capable as the old men; youth had to wait and grow old for its chances in life; youth was ridiculed, snubbed and held in the leash. And then, quite suddenly it seemed, though Ibsen had heard it knocking at the door long before, the younger generation burst upon us with an astonishing vigour, taking possession of the new century, trampling down the false gods of age and bringing in its train, like boys trooping from a nursery, hosts of new toys and new ideas in everything. It was, I think, The Day that finally discovered the Young Man. Ferrol had known the bitter opposition which he had fought in his own twenties and thirties, and he shone as the apostle of youth. The Young Man, from a neglected embryo, became a national asset; all hands were uplifted to him in the dawn of the new century. He was enthroned in the seats from which his elders were deposed. People seeking for a symbol of the new life that was beginning, looked westwards and found a whole nation that typified the Young Man who was to be their Presently the young men themselves came. They came with their hair parted in the middle, and keen, clean-shaven faces with very predominant chins. They were mere boys, and they had a bounce and a boisterous assurance that took one's breath away. With them came loudly-striped shirts, multi-coloured socks, felt hats and lounge suits in city offices, and, later, soft-fronted shirts and black silk bows for evening wear. They opened London offices for New York firms, and showed us card-indexing systems, roll-top desks, dictaphones and loose-leaf ledgers. All letters were typewritten, and the firm who sent out a letter in the crabbed handwriting of its senior clerk was accounted disgracefully behind the times. The Young Man set the pace with a vengeance, and it was a panting business to keep abreast of him. Cock-tails and quick-lunch restaurants appeared next; griddle-cakes, clam-chowder and club sandwiches were shown to us; and finally, as though having absorbed their nutriment, we had assimilated their habits, a fierce desire to speak with a nasal accent took hold of us. The man who wanted to get a job spoke with as much American accent as he could muster up; he looked American, and he affected American ways; his Ferrol found him, a year or so before he arrived, with that instinct of his, almost second-sight, which never failed. He boomed him as a Type; he glorified him, and gave him high posts in the office of The Day. With the exception of Neckinger, the editor, who came straight from New York, he was the native product, and Ferrol was always on the look-out for more of him. And so, in the midst of all this, when the cry for the Young Man was at its hungriest, when "hustle" and "strenuous" were added to the vocabulary, we see Humphrey Quain, waiting on the outskirts, watching his opportunity, and meanwhile bending over the counter of the Easterham Gazette office, coat off and shirt sleeves turned back to the elbow, folding up copies of the Easterham Gazette as they came damp, with the ink wet on them, from the printing-press in the basement. The Easterham Gazette was, unhesitatingly, the worst paper in Easterham. It was an eight-page weekly journal, with a staff of one editor, one reporter and Humphrey Quain. When things were slack in the reporting line, the reporter (an extraordinarily shaggy person called Beaver, whose thumbs were always covered with ink) was expected to "fill up time at case"—which means that he was to assist in setting up the paper in type. The editor, whose name was Worthing, walked about in a knickerbocker suit and a soft grey hat, and it was part of his business to obtain advertisements for the Gazette. The leading articles he wrote were always composed with one eye on the advertiser. In praising the laudable action of Councillor It was Beaver's duty to make the "calls" during the week. How he managed them all, I don't know; but in the intervals of attending the police-court, the council meetings, and all the meetings of local organizations, he would call at the hospital, at the mayor's parlour, on the town clerk, on the churches and cathedrals, snapping up unconsidered trifles in the shape of accidents, civic news, church services, and all the other activities of Easterham life. Sometimes during the week Beaver would swing himself astride a bicycle, as frayed and as shabby as himself, and pedal to Wimberly, or Pooleham, or further afield to Great Huxton for local meetings, all of which were of vast interest to the Easterham Gazette, since its copies went weekly—or were supposed to go—over the whole of the county, and it had annexed to its title the names of all the best villages. Its full title, by the way, was: Easterham Gazette, and Wimberly, Pooleham, Great Huxton, Middle Huxton and Little Huxton Chronicle; Coomber, Melsdom and Upper Thornton Journal, largest circulation in any district, weekly one penny. It was nigh upon sixty years of age, and therefore its tottering infirmity may be excused. Humphrey Quain came into the office ostensibly as a clerk. In the beginning he thought it was a fascinating game seeing the things that one wrote in print. Therefore, all unconsciously, he started to write. He began with "Cycle Notes" and "Theatre Notes," and presently he found himself with sufficient interest to fill It really was a remarkable paper for the twentieth century. Its advertisement space was one shilling an inch, or less if you promised not to tell any one; three men, of course, could not fill the whole of these eight great sheets, and therefore the carrier's wagon delivered every Thursday to the Easterham Gazette office, mysterious thin brown parcels the size of a column, and rather heavy. Simultaneously, all over the country, like parcels were being delivered, and, if by chance you compared an issue of the Easterham Gazette with any thirty local papers in the North, South, or East of England, you would have been amazed at the remarkable similarity of their contents. They had the same serial story of thrilling adventure, the same "Cookery Notes and Kitchen Recipes," the same "Home Hints to Household Happiness," word for word, and the same column of jokes. For these long parcels that arrived every Thursday at the Easterham Gazette office were columns of type cast from moulds, sent down from a London Agency which has made a mighty business of supplying general matter, from foreign intelligence to fashion notes, ready for the printing-press, at so much a column. They call it "stereo." Humphrey Quain had been in the office for three He parted with his father with a straining heart, for Daniel Quain was a tremendous success as a father, though he was a failure as a man. Of course this was only Humphrey's point of view: what more could a boy want than a father who could fashion any kind of toy, from whistles to steamboats, out of a block of wood; who knew enough of elementary science to make a pin sail on water, by letting it rest on a cigarette paper which soaked and sank away, leaving the pin afloat; who could blow a halfpenny from one wine-glass to another, and produce whooing sounds from a hollow tube by placing it over a gas flame. Wonderful father! It was Daniel who fostered in Humphrey's heart the love of reading: those early books were adventure stories by Fenimore Cooper, Kingston and Ballantyne. He read Harrison Ainsworth, too, and Henty, and took in the Boy's Own Paper, and, in short, did everything in the way of reading that a normal, happy, healthy-minded boy should do. "Keep clear of philosophy until you are thirty," Daniel said one day, as he was showing him how three matches can be made to stand upright; "then you won't understand enough of life to be miserable." Later, he came to the Dickens and Thackeray stage, but he was pained to find he could not enjoy Scott. He confided his distaste to his father, as though it were a guilty failing of which to be ashamed. "Form your own likes and dislikes in reading as in everything else," said Daniel. "Don't be a literary snob, and pretend you enjoy the acquaintance of books merely because they belong so to speak to the 'upper ten' of the book-world." When his father died, Humphrey was first brought face to face with the stern things of life. It was a chance remark of his aunt that gave him the first glimpse. "You'll have to do something for yourself, Humphrey," she said one day. "That father of yours did nothing for you." She always spoke bitterly of his father. Humphrey had never thought of it before. It had seemed to him that things came naturally to people from father to son: that, in some mysterious, unthought-of way, when he was about twenty or so, he would find himself with an income of sorts, or some settled employment. "You must Get On," said his aunt, looking at him through her spectacles. "Young men Get On quickly to-day. You must grasp your opportunities." So here came a new and delightful interest into Humphrey's existence. He perceived something fine in it all. From that day he had one creed in life: the creed of Getting On. This determination swamped every other interest in life. It was as if his aunt had suddenly touched upon some internal button that had started off a driving-wheel within him, and set all the machinery of energy into movement. How did one "Get On" in the world? He began to take an enormous interest in everything, to follow the doings of men and cities outside Easterham; his knowledge widened slowly, for he had no brothers and was singularly innocent in the everyday sense of the word. And all the time, during those Easterham days, These were not the thoughts of a moment: they were lingering thoughts that spread over three years, from seventeen to twenty, those three years when he was at the Easterham Gazette office, with only Beaver and Worthing for his models in life. They were thoughts in the intervals of writing "notes" on local subjects—indeed, the notes were the outcome of the thoughts—of reading, and of cycling, and going to the theatre. And then one day a most amazing thing happened. Beaver Got On! Yes, it was really incredible, but the fact was there indisputable and glaring. Beaver, shaggy and unkempt, who seemed to have settled down for ever to the meetings and the calls and the police-courts ("Harriet Higgins, 30, no fixed abode, charged with being drunk and disorderly, etc."), broke through the cobwebs that had settled on him, in an unexpected and definite manner. He came to Humphrey one day and remarked quite casually, "I've given old Worthing the push." Humphrey looked at him: he wore a Norfolk jacket, with old trousers, and a tweed hat of no shape at all. Beaver took his pipe out of his mouth, and Humphrey noticed the short nails on his stumpy, fat fingers. Beaver always bit his nails. "I've given old Worthing the push," said Beaver. "Look at this." He showed a letter to Humphrey, who saw that it was from the "Special News Agency" of London, employing Beaver in their service at £2, 10s. a week. "How did you get it?" Humphrey asked. "Wrote in," said Beaver, gnawing a finger-tip. "Been writing in on the quiet for the last year. Fed up with old Worthing and filling up time at case." "I thought you had to know how to write well if you wanted to work in London," Humphrey said. There were no illusions about Beaver's style. "Oh! the Agency doesn't want writing—it wants a man who can take down shorthand verbatim.... I'm off next week," said Beaver. Humphrey looked longingly at him and his letter, and then round at the whitewashed walls of the office, with its Calendars and local Directories for years past on the shelf, and the pile of Gazettes on the corner of the counter. Mr Worthing passed through the office, stopped, and scowled at Beaver. "Kindly remove your head-gear in the front office," he said, and Beaver, with the unmurmuring discipline of years which nothing could break, took off the crumpled tweed thing he called a hat. "Nice pig, isn't he?" Beaver said to Humphrey, as Worthing went out. "We had an awful row. Said I ought to have given him a month's notice. A week "Oh, Beaver!" cried Humphrey, hopelessly. "It is a Hole. He is a Pig.... But what's going to happen to me?" "You'll do my work," Beaver remarked. "I can't write shorthand. Besides, I don't want to. How old are you, Beaver?" "Just turned thirty. Why?" "Thirty!" thought Humphrey; fancy Beaver having wasted all these years in doing nothing but local reporting. Would he have to work ten years more and still achieve nothing further than Beaver. There must be some way out of it. Beaver had found it, and surely he could. "It's fine for you," Humphrey said, admiringly now, for, in the blankness of Beaver leaving the office where they had worked, he had forgotten to congratulate him. "The Special News Agency is the biggest in London, isn't it." "Rather," said Beaver, comfortably. "It's a life job." That was his ambition. "Look here, young Quain, I think you're too good for Easterham, too. Those notes of yours, you know.... I used to read 'em every week. Not at all bad.... You take my tip, and do a turn at reporting for a while, and then when you've got the hang of things write in. Write in to all the London papers. Say you've had good provincial experience—'provincial' sounds better than local. You'll see. You're bound to get replies. Say you're a good all-round man. Enclose a stamped envelope." Beaver sauntered to and fro, nibbling at a nail between excited sentences. "Oh, and don't you forget it. Write on Easterham Gazette notepaper." And when, a week later, Beaver left, Worthing asked Humphrey to try his hand at the police-court, Humphrey accepted the inevitable, and tried to improve on the style of the police reports. Worthing swore at him and rewrote them all, and told him to model his style on that of the late Mr Beaver. Whereupon Humphrey, seeing that he would never Get On if he were to live in the shadow of Beaver, sat down, and "wrote in." He wrote to The Day, because he bought the paper every morning, and thought it was wonderful. The day that Ferrol's reply arrived was a day of triumph for Humphrey. The letter came to him with unbelievable promptness, asking him to call at the office.... Never again did Humphrey recapture the fine emotion that thrilled him as he read and re-read the letter. Looking back on it, he saw that those moments were among the most glorious in his life; he stood on the threshold of a world of promise and enchantment, suddenly revealed to him by this scrap of paper with The Day in embossed blue letters, surrounded by telephone numbers and telegraphic addresses of the great newspaper. When he showed the letter to his aunt, she sighed in a tired way, and said unexpectedly: "I'm afraid you will never get on, Humphrey. You are too restless. I'm sure you would do better to remain with Mr Worthing. However...." She very rarely finished her sentences. Humphrey smiled. He saw himself marching to fortune; he was twenty, and it never occurred to him that he could fail. You may call Fleet Street what you like, but the secret of it eludes you always. It has as many moods as a woman: it is the street of laughter and of tears, of adventure and dullness, of romance and reality, of promise and lost hopes, of conquest and broken men. Into its narrow neck are crammed all the hurrying life, the passions, the eager, beating hearts, the happiness and the sorrow of the broad streets East and West that lead to it. There is something in this thin, crooked street, holding in its body the essence of the world, that clutches at the imagination, something in the very atmosphere surrounding it which makes it different from all the other streets that are walked by men. The stones and the old timber of some of its buildings are like the yellow parchment of some ancient manuscript, scribbled with faded history. There are chop-houses, and taverns, where the wigged and knee-breeched Puffs sat writing their tit-bits of scandal for the fashionable intelligence of the day; where Addison and Steele tapped their snuff-boxes and planned their letters to Mr Spectator; or, further back in the years, Shakespeare himself went Strandwards from Blackfriars up the narrow street where the gabled houses leaned to one another. Look, you can almost see the ghosts of Fleet Street pacing out of the little courts and alleys that lie athwart the street: you know that massive bulk of a man, walking ponderously, in drab-coloured coat and knee-breeches, and rather untidy stockings above It lures you like a siren, coaxing with soft promises of prizes to be wrested from it: you shall be the favoured of the gods, and you become Sisyphus, rolling his stone eternally, day after day. Here are the things of life that you covet, they shall be yours, says the Street: and you are Tantalus, reaching out everlastingly, and grasping nothing, until your heart is parched within you. You shall be strong and mighty, it says, sapping your strength like Delilah, until you pull down the pillars of hope, and fall buried beneath the reckless ruins of your career. Once you have answered the voice of the siren, you are taken in the magic spell. Beat your breast, and exclaim in agony, but nothing will avail, for if you leave the Street, the quiet world will seem void for ever, and, as the ghosts burn backwards through space, so shall you return to the old agitations and longings. This was the Street to which young Humphrey Quain came on a January morning, riding triumphantly on the top of an omnibus. As he passed the fantastic Griffin, with its open jaws and monstrous scaly wings, like a warder guarding those who would escape, Fleet Street seemed to be the Street of Conquest. It was a rare, crisp day, with a touch of frost in the air, and the sun clear and high in the heavens, above the tangle of wires and cables that almost roofed the Street. The traffic was beating up and down, with frequent blocks, here and there, as a heavy hooded van staggered up from Whitefriars or Bouverie Street. It was nearly mid-day, and the light two-wheeled carts were pouring out of Shoe Lane, or coming from Salisbury Square with the early editions of the afternoon papers. Newsboys on bicycles, with sacks of papers swung over their backs, seemed to be risking their lives every moment as they flashed into the thick of the traffic, clinging to hansoms, and sliding between drays and omnibuses, out of the press, until they could get through the narrow neck of Fleet Street towards the West. Humphrey breathed deeply as he looked about him: the names of the newspapers were blazoned everywhere. Heavens! what a world of paper and ink this was, to be sure. The doors, the windows and the letter-boxes bore the titles of newspapers—all the newspapers that were. Every room, on every floor, was inhabited by the representatives of some paper or other: on the musty top windows he could read the titles of journals in Canada and Australia; great golden letters bulged across the buildings telling of familiar newspapers. The houses were an odd mixture of modernity and antiquity, they jostled each other in their cramped space; narrow buildings squeezed between high, red offices with plate-glass windows, and over and above the irregular roofs the wires spread thin threads against the sky, wires that gave and received news from the uttermost ends of the earth. The letters in white enamel or gold on the windows told of Paris and Berlin, of Rotterdam and Vienna; here they marked the home of a religious paper, there And, rising out of the riot of narrow buildings, huddled closely to each other, the great homes of the daily papers stood up as landmarks. Here were the London offices of the important provincial papers, which spoke nightly with Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool—plate-glass windows and large letters gave them a handsome enough appearance, but they looked comparatively insignificant beside the tall red building of The Sentinel, and the new green-glazed establishment of The Wire, while the grey, enormous offices of The Day dwarfed them all. There was something solid about The Day as it stood four-square firmly in the Street, with its great letters sprawled across the front, golden by day, and golden with electric light in the night-time. It seemed almost as if The Day had nudged the other great papers out of Fleet Street, for in the side streets, in Bouverie Street, and Whitefriars Street, and in Shoe Lane, the remainder of the London papers found their homes, with the exception of the high-toned Morning Courier, which found itself at the western end of the Street past the Law Courts. But The Day, with its arrogant dome-tower (lit up at nights), its swinging glass doors and braided commissionaires, was the most typical of the modern newspaper world. It was just such a place as Humphrey Quain had dreamed. The swing doors For a few moments Humphrey hesitated a little nervously. He was a minute or two in advance of the time appointed for the interview, and he stood there, irresolute, filled with a wondrous sense of expectancy, among the crowd that hurried to and fro. He noticed on the other side of the road a bearded man, in a silk hat and a frayed overcoat, sitting on a doorstep at the top of Whitefriars Street. The man had a keen, intelligent face with blue eyes. It was the shiny silk hat that leapt to Humphrey's notice, it seemed so out of keeping with the rest of the man's clothes. Besides, why should a man in a silk hat sit on a doorstep.... Years later the man was still there, every day, sitting sphinx-like, surveying those who passed him ... he must have marked their faces grow older. The commissionaire regarded Humphrey critically. It was the business of the commissionaire in The Day office, especially, to be a judge of character. He divided callers into two main classes—those who wanted to see the editor, and those whom the editor wanted to see. The two classes were quite distinct, and there were few who, like Humphrey Quain, belonged to both. "Yes, by appointment," said Humphrey, a little proudly, to the commissionaire's cold question that rose like a wall to so many callers. He was shown into a little room, and made to fill up a form—name, address and business. The next minute a boy in a green uniform led him up a flight of stairs, through the ante-room where the pink-cheeked Trinder sat typewriting diligently, and so to Ferrol's room. Humphrey had a confused impression of a broad, Ferrol looked up from his papers, pushed back his round, upholstered chair that tipped slightly on its axis, and the room with its red walls and carpet suddenly faded from Humphrey, and he became aware only of a face that looked at him ... a masterful, powerful face, strong in every feature, from the thick, closely-knit eyebrows below the broad forehead, to the round, large chin. There was something insistent in this face of Ferrol, with its steel-coloured eyes, that hardened or softened with his moods, and its black moustache, that bulged heavily over his upper lip and gave him an appearance of rugged ferocity. Humphrey felt as if he were a squirming thing under the microscope.... That was the way of Ferrol—everything There is not the slightest doubt that Humphrey felt a little nervous—who would not, with Ferrol's eyes boring through one?—but he knew that great issues were at stake. He carried his head high, and his eyes met Ferrol's without a quiver. Thus he stood by the table for five seconds, though it seemed as many minutes to him, until Ferrol told him to sit down. "So you want to come on The Day," was the way Ferrol began. They were eye to eye all the while. "Yes, sir," said Humphrey, briskly. Somehow or other, with the sound of Ferrol's voice all his nervousness departed. It was the silence that had made him feel awkward. "Let's see.... Ah! yes; you've been on an Easterham paper, haven't you?" "Three years," Humphrey replied. "That all the experience you've had?" Humphrey smiled faintly. "That's all," he said. "What do you want to do?" Here was an amazing question for which he was totally unprepared. It had never occurred to him that he would be asked to make his choice. His eyes wandered to the buttons.... What did he want to do? He made an answer that sounded futile and foolish to him. "I want to get on," he stammered, hesitatingly, with a picture of his aunt rising mentally before him. Ferrol's eyes twinkled. It was a magic answer if Humphrey had but known. Most of the others he saw "Well, this is the place for young men who want to get on, you know," said Ferrol. "It's hard work...." He turned away and consulted some papers. "I think I'll give you a chance," he said. The clock struck twelve, and it sounded to Humphrey that a chime of joy-bells had flooded the room with triumphant music. "When can you start?" Ferrol asked. "Next week," Humphrey said. "You can start at three pounds a week." Ferrol pressed a button. Trinder appeared. "Ask Mr Rivers if he can come," said Ferrol. Humphrey thought only of three pounds a week ... three pounds! "I'll put you on the reporting staff," Ferrol remarked. Then he smiled. "We'll see how you get on...." There was a pause. (Three pounds a week! Three pounds a week!) He looked up as the door opened and saw an extraordinarily virile-looking person come into the room—a man with the face of a refined pugilist, with large square-shaped hands and an expression of impish perkiness in his eyes. "Come in, Rivers," said Ferrol. "This is Mr Quain." Mr Rivers shook his hand with an air of polite restraint. "Mr Rivers is our News Editor," explained Ferrol, and then to Rivers, "I have engaged Mr Quain for a trial month, Rivers." Rivers smiled whimsically. "You're not a genius, I hope," he said to Humphrey. The spirit of humour that flashed across Rivers's face, twinkling his eyes and the "That's all right," said Rivers, his face so creased in smiles until his beady eyes threatened to disappear altogether. "The last genius we had," he said, with a nod to Ferrol, "let us down horribly on the Bermondsey murder story." The telephone bell rang. "I'll see him now," said Ferrol through the telephone, and Humphrey took that as a signal that the interview was ended. Ferrol shook hands with him, and once more he felt himself the target of those steel-grey eyes that held in them the stern remorselessness of strength. "Good-looking young man," said Rivers, as the door closed behind Humphrey. "Hope he'll shape all right." "I hope so," Ferrol echoed.... And he was glad that Rivers had praised Humphrey, for he was pleased with the upright, manly bearing of the lad, the quick intelligence of the face, and he had noticed the frank eyes, the smooth skin and the dark hair that had belonged in the lost years to Margaret. Humphrey came downstairs and out into the street again walking like one in a dream. His interview with Ferrol had lasted barely five minutes, and in those few minutes the whole course of his future life had been determined. His mind was whirling with the suddenness of it all; whirling and whirling round one thought, the thought of three pounds a week. Round this pivot, as a catharine-wheel spins round its pin, the thing of the greatest import revolved brilliantly, shedding its luminous light far into the dark recesses of the future ... he was on The Day. Fleet Street was at his feet. In that moment a new Humphrey Quain was born, different from the youth who had walked a little timorously into Ferrol's room; he was no longer a lost cipher in the world, he was a unit in the army that marched forwards, with Progress and To-morrow for their watchwords. He felt, suddenly, a great man—Humphrey Quain of The Day, cocksure, self-confident, with ambitions that appalled him when he thought of them in after years. What would Beaver say? What would old Worthing say...? And there was his aunt, too. That man in the silk hat, with the shabby overcoat, was still sitting on the doorstep. As Humphrey passed him, his lips twisted in a haunting ironical smile. Perhaps he knew of Humphrey's thoughts. He went back to Easterham. After all, Worthing took it very well, and his aunt agreed that three pounds a And there followed days of tremendous dreams. A week later a four-wheeler brought up outside No. 5A Guilford Street, and there, on the doorstep, was Beaver, with his thumbs inkier than ever, waiting to welcome Humphrey to London. The cabman, one of those red-faced, truculent individuals whom a petrol-driven Nemesis has now overtaken and rendered humble, demanded two shillings more than his fare, firstly, because it was obvious that Humphrey came from the country, and secondly, because he had gone by mistake to 550A, which was at the far end of the street. "Why didn't you speak the number plainly," he growled. They compromised with an extra sixpence, on the condition that the cabman should assist in carrying Humphrey's two trunks into the house, as far as the second-floor landing. "There are your rooms," Beaver said, throwing open the door; "you've got a sitting-room, with a little bed-room at the side. Twelve shillings a week," he said, anxiously. "Not too much, I hope. Breakfasts, one shilling a day." He lowered his voice mysteriously. "Take my tip, Quain, and open the eggs and the window at the same time." Humphrey laughed. It was jolly to have Beaver in the loneliness of London. This was quite another Beaver, a better-groomed Beaver, with a clean collar, and only one day's stubble on his chin. He made swift Coals were a shilling a scuttle. Beaver confided to him that he had a regular system for checking the coal supply. It seems he made an inventory of every lump of coal in every fresh scuttleful. He kept a kind of day-book and ledger system of coal, debiting against the credit supply the lumps that he put on the fire, and balancing his books at night. In this way Mrs Wayzgoose, the landlady, found no opportunity for making extra capital out of the coal business. "You're better off than I am," Beaver said. "I've only got the top room at eight shillings a week—a bed-sitting room. But then, I send ten shillings a week to my sister. It doesn't leave@ very much by the time I've had my meals and paid the rent." Humphrey begged him to consider the sitting-room as his own, so long as he lived in the house. They began to unpack together, Beaver making exclamations of surprise at the turn of things. "Fancy you being on The Day!" he said, pausing with a volume in each hand. "It all happened so quickly. I took your advice. Ferrol seems a wonderful chap." "Oh! I daresay Ferrol's all right ... but The Day's got an awful reputation. They're always sacking somebody.... I'd rather be where I am. They've got to keep firing, you know. New blood, and new ideas. That's what they want." Humphrey laughed. "I'm not afraid," he said. "Once I get my teeth into the place, they won't shake me off." All the same, it must be confessed that Beaver's words awoke a slight feeling of alarm in his heart. A king might arise who knew not Humphrey, and he might go down with the rest. "We'll put the books on the mantelpiece; I'll have to get a book-shelf to-morrow." Humphrey had brought up a few of his favourites—an odd collection: The Fifth Form at St Dominic's; The Time Machine; An Easy Outline of Evolution; Gulliver's Travels, and Captain Singleton; the poems of Browning and Robert Buchanan, and Carlyle's French Revolution. The pictures they agreed to hang to-morrow. They were only heliogravure prints of the kind that were sold in shilling parts. Watts' "Hope" and "Life and Death," and other popular pictures, together with photographic reproductions of authors, ancient and modern, from The Bookman. When they had finished, Humphrey surveyed his new home. It looked comfortable enough in the fire-light, with the green curtains drawn over the windows. The furniture was of the heavy mahogany, mid-Victorian fashion, blended with a horsehair sofa and bent-wood arm-chair, that struck a jarring note of ultra-modernity. There was a flat-topped desk in one corner by the fireplace. The mantelpiece was hideous with pink and blue vases that held dried grass and clipped bulrushes. Looking round more carefully, he saw that Moses himself could not have had more bulrushes to screen him than Mrs Wayzgoose had put for the delight of her lodgers. There were bulrushes in the mirror over the sideboard, bulrushes in a gaily-decorated stand whose paint hid its drain-pipe pedigree, bulrushes in another bloated vase on a fretted ebony stand by the window. Who shall explain this extraordinary passion for bulrushes that still holds in its thrall the respectable landladies of England? "I must have them cleared away," said Humphrey. Beaver smiled. "You just try!" he said meaningly. "Anyhow, you're better off than I am, mine's paper fans." He rang the bell, and a stout, placid-faced woman appeared at the door. She wore at her neck a large topaz-coloured stone, as large as a saucer, set in a circle of filigree gold, and heavy-looking lumps of gold dangled from her ears. Her hands, with their fingers interlocked, rested on the ends of the shawl that made her appear even more ample than she was. "This is Mr Quain, Mrs Wayzgoose," said Beaver. Mrs Wayzgoose's face fell apart in her welcoming smile—the smile that her lodgers saw only once. It was a wonderful, carefully-studied smile, beginning with the gradual creasing of the mouth, extending earwards, joyfully, and finally spreading until the nose and the eyes were brought into the scheme. "I hope you find everything you want, Mr Quain," she said. "Everything's very comfortable," Humphrey answered. "Do you take tea or coffee with your breakfasts, Mr Quain?" Humphrey was about to reply coffee, when the guardian Beaver winked enormously at him, and shook his head in a manner that was quite perplexing. He had not a notion of what Beaver was trying to convey—there was evidently something to beware of in the question. Then, he had an inspiration. "What do I take, Beaver?" he asked. "Oh, tea—undoubtedly tea," Beaver answered hastily. "Very good." Mrs Wayzgoose turned to go. "Oh! by the way, Mrs Wayzgoose," Humphrey said. "These ... these bulrushes...." "Bulrushes!" echoed Mrs Wayzgoose, losing her placidity all of a sudden. There was an icy silence. Beaver seemed to be enjoying it. "Pray, what of my bulrushes?" demanded the masterful Mrs Wayzgoose. "Don't you think ... I mean ... wouldn't the room be lighter without them?" "Without them?" The way she echoed his words, her voice rising in its scale, reminded him of the wolf's replies to Red Riding Hood before making a meal of her. "Are you aware, Mr Quain, that those bulrushes have been there for the last thirty years." "I was not aware of it, but I am not surprised to hear it," Humphrey answered politely. "And that never a complaint has been made about them." "I am surprised to hear that," he murmured. "The last gentleman who had these rooms," continued Mrs Wayzgoose, "he was a gentleman, in spite of being coffee-coloured, was a law student. Mr Hilfi Abbas. He took the rooms because of the bulrushes. Said they reminded him of the Nile. I could let these rooms over and over again to Egyptian gentlemen while these bulrushes are there...." And with that she flounced out of the room in a whirl of skirts, with her ear-rings rocking to the headshakes which punctuated her remarks. "There you are," said Beaver, as the door closed behind her. "What did I tell you?" Humphrey laughed, and shook his fist at the offending bulrushes. "They'll go somehow, you see." When all the unpacking was finished, the pipes put in the pipe-rack, the tobacco-jar on the table, and the photographs of his mother, his father and his aunt placed on the mantelpiece, the question of food came uppermost in his mind. Beaver told him that he had accepted an invitation to supper. "I met a chap on a job whom I knew years ago. "Well, it doesn't matter," said Humphrey. "I can manage for myself. Don't let me upset your arrangements." "Look here," Beaver said suddenly. "Why shouldn't you come with me. It's only cold supper and they won't mind a bit. I'll explain things. Besides," he added, as he noticed Humphrey was hesitating, "Tommy Pride will be one of your new colleagues. He's on The Day. You might be able to pick up a few tips from him." So Humphrey agreed, and they went up into Holborn. It was Sunday evening and every shop was shut, except an isolated restaurant and a tobacconist here and there. The public-houses alone were wholly open, and their windows radiated brilliance into the night. The East had invaded the West for its Sunday parade, and the streets were a restless procession of young people; sex called to sex without anything more evil in intention than a walk through the streets, a hand-clasp and, perhaps, a kiss in some by-way, and then to part with the memory of a gay adventure that would linger during the dull routine of the week to come, to be forgotten and replaced by another. Beaver was for taking the "tube" to Shepherd's Bush—it was a new luxury for London then, making people wonder how they could have borne so long with the sulphurous smoke and gloom of the old underground railway—but the movement of the streets fascinated Humphrey, and, though the journey took much longer, they went out by omnibus. Ah! that ride.... The first ride through London, when Humphrey felt the great buildings all around him, and above him, rising enormously in a long chain that And, now, he felt afraid for the first time, knowing that he could never conquer these people by the path he had chosen. What mattered anything to them, except that it touched the root of their lives? They cared nothing, he knew, for the greatness of things. They talked vaguely of the greatness of Empire, but they never thought about it, nor understood it. They lived in a world of names—the world itself was nothing but a string of names which they had been taught. The very stars above them were just "Stars," and the word meant no more to them: if you had talked to them of infinite worlds beyond worlds, of other planets with suns Out of the mists of his thoughts, Beaver's voice came to him. "There's the Marble Arch," said Beaver. "What have you been dreaming about? You haven't said a word all the time." Humphrey laughed. "I was looking at the people," he said. "I always like looking at people." They went past Hyde Park, with its naked trees showing like skeletons in the moonlight. The night seemed to deepen the spaciousness of the Park, with its shadows and silence; it held all the mystery and beauty of a forest. And later they passed the blue, far-reaching depths of Kensington Gardens, with the scent of trees and the smell of earth after rain coming to them. It was all new to Humphrey, new and delightful. He promised himself glorious days and nights probing this city to its heart, and listening to the beat of its pulses. Already, for so was he fashioned, he began to note his emotions, and to watch his inner self, and the impressions he was receiving, so that he could write about them. This was the journalist's sense—a sixth sense—which urges its possessor to set down everything he observes, and adds an infinite zest to life, since every experience, every thought, every new feeling, means The memory of that evening at the Prides remained with Humphrey. It was his first glimpse into the social life, and he saw a home that was wholly delightful. Beaver had not under-estimated the hospitality of the Prides. They gave him a hearty welcome that made him feel at home at once. Tommy Pride met them in the passage, and after the first introductions he led the way to the sitting-room, where Mrs Pride was waiting. She was a woman of forty, buxom and charming. He saw, within a very few minutes, that her admiration of Tommy Pride knew no bounds, that she thought him splendid and flawless—that much he read from the way her brown eyes lit up when she gazed upon him, and the fond smile that marked her lips when she spoke to him. The sitting-room was not a very large apartment, but it was furnished with unusual taste. There were books set in white enamelled bookcases—books that are permanent on the shelf, and not novels of a moment. There was chintz on the arm-chairs and green curtains hung over the window, and a few original black-and-white drawings and water-colours on the walls, papered in dark blue. The impression that the room gave to the visitor was one of peace and rest. Humphrey was frankly disappointed in Tommy Pride. He had had a vague notion that everybody connected with a London newspaper was, of necessity, a person of fame. He knew the names of those who signed the articles in The Day, and he imagined he "Well," Mrs Pride said to him; "so you're going to try your luck in London, Mr Quain?" Humphrey nodded, and the conversation went into the channels of small talk. Beaver and he amused the Prides with recollections of Easterham and Mr Worthing, and Tommy Pride capped their recollections with some of his own. "When I was on a little local paper once, we had a fellow named Smee, who thought he could write," said Tommy. "The editor was a hard, cruel sort of chap, without any sympathy for the finer side of literature—at least that was what Smee said. He used to sob all round the place, because he wanted to write great throbbing prose instead of borough-council meetings. One day Smee got his chance. The editor was ill, and there was a prisoner to be hanged in the county jail. Smee wrote the effort of his life. It went something in this way:— "'Last Tuesday, under the blue vault of heaven, when the larks were singing their rhapsodies to the roseate dawn, at 8 A.M., like a sudden harbinger of horror, the black flag fluttered above the prison walls, showing that Alfred Trollop, aged forty-two, labourer, had suffered the last penalty of the law—viz., death.'" "How's that for descriptive?" asked Tommy, smacking his lips. "'Viz., death.' A glorious touch, eh?" He leaned towards Humphrey. "Don't you bother about "Don't be so depressing, Tommy," Mrs Pride said. "Never mind what he says, Mr Quain—there's a chance for every one to do his best in Fleet Street." "Dear optimistress," remarked Tommy, linking an arm in hers, "let's see what we have for supper." They all went into the dining-room, and Humphrey was given the place of honour next to Mrs Pride. Beaver sat opposite, and Tommy was at the head of the table carving the joint of cold roast beef. "I'm a little out of form," he said, whimsically. "This is the first meal I've had at home for a week." "I sometimes wish Tommy were a sub-editor," Mrs Pride confided to Humphrey; "then we should at least have the day to ourselves. But he says he could never sit down at a desk for eight hours a night." "Not me," Tommy interposed, with his mouth full of beef. "If they want to make you a sub-editor, Quain, take several grains of cyanide of potassium rather than yield. You've got some freedom of thought and life as a reporter, but if you're a sub you're chained down with a string of rules. They make you wear a mental uniform." "I thought a sub-editor held a more important position than a reporter," Humphrey said. "So he does, only the reporters don't think so. The paper couldn't get on without the sub-editors. I should love to see The Day printed for just one issue with everything that the reporters wrote untouched. It would have to be a forty-two page paper. Because every reporter thinks his story is the best, and writes as much of it as he can.... I like the subs, they've saved my life over and over again. Next to the Agency men Beaver laughed. "It strikes me you people on the regular staff of the papers take yourselves much too seriously. You've all got swelled heads. For the sake of fine phrases you'll lose half the facts. Why don't you all understand that it's simply in the day's work to do your job and forget all about it." "Lord knows," Tommy replied, "but we don't. We get obsessed with our jobs, and dream them, and spend hours taking trouble over them, and we know all the time that when they come cold and chilly at night through the sub's hands, they're lopped about and cut up to fit a space. We may pretend we don't care what happens to our writing, so long as we draw our money, but I think we all do in our secret hearts. We're born that way. The moment a man really doesn't care whether his story is printed or cut to shreds, he's no good in a newspaper office. It means he's lost his enthusiasm." Tommy's voice fell. He knew well enough that that was the state of affairs to which he had come. All the long, long years of work had left him emotionless. He had exhausted his enthusiasm, and the whole business seemed stale to him. He felt out of place in this new world of newspaperdom, peopled with energetic, hopeful young men who came out of nowhere, and captured at once the prizes which were so hardly won in his day. He felt himself being nudged out of it all, by the pushful enthusiastic army of young men who had marched down on Fleet Street. All round him he saw signs of the coming change—the old penny papers were talking of changing their price to a halfpenny; the older men in journalism were being pensioned off, or dismissed, or And they would want young men, keen, shrewd young men, and so the day would come when he would fade away from the life of Fleet Street. And then—"Tommy and I are going to retire soon," Mrs Pride said, with a fond glance at her husband, "aren't we, Tommy?" "She means to the workhouse, Beaver," Tommy remarked, with a grin. "We're going to have a cottage in the country, and Tommy's going to write his book." "No," said Beaver, incredulously. "Do you write books, Mr Pride?" Humphrey asked. "I? Lord, no! Not now. I once had an idea of writing books. I was just about your age. I believe I've even got the first chapter somewhere. But I've never written it. Whenever the missis and I get very depressed, we cheer ourselves up by talking of that book, and writing it in the country. By the way, do you know that deep down in the heart of every newspaper man there's a longing to write one book, and to live on two pounds a week in the country?" "That'll do, Tommy," Mrs Pride interposed. "I won't have you spoil Mr Quain's evening any more. You're making him quite depressed. Don't pay any attention to him, Mr Quain, and have some cheese." After supper they went back to the sitting-room, and Mrs Pride played to them, and Beaver sang in a shaky bass voice. Humphrey had never heard Beaver sing before. There was something grotesque about the singing. It took Humphrey by surprise. Beaver was the sort of man who, somehow or other, one imagined would sing in a high treble. He sang on and on, right through the portfolio of the "World's Favourite Songs," including "The Anchor's Weighed," "John Peel," "The Heart Bowed Down," and the rest of them. Pride sat in the arm-chair by the fireside, smoking a pipe, and nodding to the old melodies, while Humphrey gravitated to the book-shelves, and looked at some of the books. He seemed to have left Easterham and his aunt far behind him in dim ages. A new feeling of responsibility came over him, as he sat there thinking of the morrow when his battle with Fleet Street was to begin. The future rested with him alone, and it gave him a delicious thrill of individuality to think of it. It was as if he had suddenly become merged with some one else within him, who was constantly saying to him: "You are Humphrey Quain.... You are Humphrey Quain. Take charge of yourself now.... I have finished with you." He had an odd sense of not fully knowing this strange new Self with which he was faced. He wondered, too, whether Beaver or Pride had ever passed through the same sensation that was passing through him now. This was the beginning of that introspection when the presence of his Self became The evening came to an end, but before they left Pride took Humphrey aside. "Beaver said you might like a few hints," he said. "I don't think I can help you much. I think you know your way about. But there are two important things to remember: Don't be a genius, and don't be a fool. I'll tell you more in the morning." On the way back to Guilford Street Beaver eulogized Pride. He was one of the best reporters in Fleet Street—one of the safest, Beaver meant. Never let his paper down. Worth his salary on any paper. "I suppose he gets a pretty big salary?" Humphrey asked. "Who? Pride—no! I don't think he gets very much. He's not a show man, you see. Of course, dear old Tommy hasn't got a cent to spare. He's got a girl of thirteen at boarding-school, and that takes a good bit of keeping up." "Why was he so discouraging?" "Oh! that's his way. He pretends he's a pessimist." Humphrey went to bed that night full of thoughts of the morning. And in the tumult of his thoughts he wondered how he should avoid becoming as Tommy Pride, with all his thirty years of work as nothing, and all the high ambitions sacrificed to Fleet Street. Was that to be his end too—a reporter for ever, and at the finish of it, nothing but the husks of enthusiasm. He thought of Pride's wistful desire for a cottage in the country and two pounds a week. And he fell asleep while thinking how he was going to find a better end to his work than that. |
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