Socrates How singular is the thing called pleasure, and
how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be
the opposite; for they never come to a man together, and yet
he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take
the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of
one head or stem; and I can not help thinking that, if Aesop
had noticed them, he would have made a fable about God
trying to reconcile their strife, and when he could not, he
fastened their heads together; and this is the reason why
when one comes the other follows. Plato
That Erica should live any longer upon the money which her father
chiefly made by the dissemination of views with which she disagreed
was clearly impossible, at least impossible to one of her sincere and
thorough nature. But to find work was very difficult, indeed. After an
anxious waiting and searching, she was one day surprised by receiving
through Charles Osmond's friend, Mr. Crutchley, an introduction to the
editor of a well-known and widely read paper. Every one congratulated
her, but she could not feel very hopeful, it seemed too good to prove
true it was, in fact, so exactly the position which she would herself
have chosen that it seemed unlikely it should ever really be hers. Still
of course she hoped, and arrangements were made for an interview with
Mr. Bircham, editor and part proprietor of the “Daily Review.”
Accordingly, one hot summer morning Erica dressed herself carefully,
tried to look old and serious, and set off with Tom to the city.
“I'll see you safe to the door of the lion's den,” said Tom as they made
their way along the crowded streets. “I only wish I could be under the
table during the interview; I should like to see you doing the dignified
journalist.”
“I wouldn't have you for the world!” said Erica, laughing. Then, growing
grave again, “Oh, Tom! How I wish it were over! It's worse than three
hundred visits to a dentist rolled into one.”
“Appalling prospect!” said Tom. “I can exactly picture what it will
be. BIRCHAM! Such a forbidding name for an editor. He'll be a sort of
editorial Mr. Squeers; he'll talk in a loud, blustering way, and you'll
feel exactly like a journalistic Smike.”
“No,” said Erica, laughing. “He'll be a neat little dapper man, very
smooth and bland, and he'll talk patronizingly and raise my hopes, and
then, in a few days' time will send me a polite refusal.”
“Tell him at once that you hero-worship Sir Michael Cunningham, the
statesman of the age, the most renowned 'Sly Bacon!'”
“Tom, do be quiet!” said Erica. “I wish you had never thought of that
horrid name.”
“Horrid! I mean to make my fortune out of it. If you like, you can offer
the pun on reasonable terms to Mr. Bircham.”
“Why, this is Fleet Street! Doesn't it lead out of this?” said Erica,
with an indescribable feeling in the back of her neck. “We must be quite
near.”
“Nearer than near,” said Tom. “Now then, left wheel! Here we are, you
see. It's a mercy that you turn pink with fright, not green like the
sea-green Robespierre. Go in looking as pretty as that, and Mr. Squeers
will graciously accept your services, unless he's sand-blind.”
“What a tease you are. Do be quiet!” implored Erica. And then, in what
seemed to her an alarmingly short time she was actually left by herself
to beard the lion, and a clerk was assuring her that Mr. Bircham was in,
and would she walk upstairs.
For reasons best known to himself, the editor of the “Daily Review” had
his private room at the very top of the house. A sedate clerk led the
way up a dingy staircase, and Erica toiled after him, wondering how much
breath she should have left by the time she reached the end. On one of
the landings she caught sight of a sandy cat and felt a little reassured
at meeting such an every-day creature in this grim abode; she gave it a
furtive stroke as she passed, and would have felt it a protection if
she could have picked it up and taken it with her. That would have been
undignified, however, and by the time she reached the editor's room
only a very observant person could have discovered in her frank,
self-possessed manner any trace of nervousness.
So different was Mr Bircham from their preconceived notions that she
could almost have laughed at the contrast. He was very tall and pompous,
he wore a lank brown wig which looked as if it might come off at any
moment, he had little keen gray eyes which twinkled, and a broad mouth
which shut very closely; whether it was grim or humorous she could not
quite decide. He was sitting in a swivel chair, and the table strewn
with letters, and the desk with its pigeon holes crammed with papers,
looked so natural and so like her father's that she began to feel a
reassuring sense of fellowship with this entire stranger. The inevitable
paste-pot and scissors, the piles of newspapers, the books of reference,
all looked homelike to her.
Mr. Bircham rose and bowed rather formally, motioned her to a seat, and
swung round his own seat so that they faced one another. Then he scanned
her from head to foot with the sort of appraising glance to which she
was only too well accustomed a glance which said as plainly as words:
“Oh! So you are that atheist's daughter are you?”
But whatever impression Erica made upon Mr. Bircham, not a muscle of
his face altered, and he began to discuss business in a most formal and
business-like way. Things did not seem very hopeful, and Erica began to
doubt more and ore whether she had the smallest chance of acceptance.
Something in the dry formal manner of the editor struck a chill to her
heart. So much, so very much depended on this interview, and already the
prospect seemed far from hopeful.
“I should like to see some of your work,” observed Mr. Bircham. “How
long have you been in the habit of writing in Mr. Raeburn's organ?”
“For the last five years,” said Erica.
Mr. Bircham lifted his shaggy eyebrows at this, for Erica looked even
younger than she really was. However, he made no comment, but took up
the end of a speaking tube.
“Send up Jones with the file of 'Idol-Breakers' I ordered.”
Erica's color rose. Presently the answer from the lower regions appeared
in the shape of the sedate clerk carrying a great bundle of last year's
'Idol-Breakers.'
“Perhaps you will show me one or two of your average articles,” said Mr.
Bircham, and, while Erica searched through the bundle of papers, he took
up one of the copies which she had put aside, and studied the outside
page critically. “'The Idol-Breaker:' Advocate of Freethought and
Secularism. Edited by Luke Raeburn.”
“They are slaves who dare not be In the right with two or three.”
Mr. Bircham put it down and began to watch her attentively. She was
absorbed in her search, and was quite unconscious of his scrutiny. Even
had she noticed him, she would not have understood what was passing in
his mind. His little gray eyes grew bright; then he pushed back his wig
impatiently; then he cleared his throat; finally he took snuff, sneezed
violently, and walked to the window. When he returned he was even more
dry and formal than before.
“These, I think, are fairly representative,” said Erica. “I have marked
them on the margin.”
He took the three or four copies she handed to him, and began to look
through one of the articles, muttering a sentence half aloud every now
and then, and making little ejaculations which might have been either
approval or disapproval.
Finally the interview ended. Mr. Bircham put down the papers with a sigh
of utter weariness, Erica thought.
“Well, Miss Raeburn,” he remarked, “I will look at one or two of your
other articles, and will communicate with you in a few days' time.”
Then he shook hands with her with frigid politeness, and in another
minute she was slowly making her way down the dingy staircase. Partly
from the reaction after her excitement, partly from mental worry and
physical weariness, she felt by the time she was fairly out of the
office as if she could hardly drag herself along. Her heart was like
lead, blank loss of hope and weary anxiety as to the next effort to be
made were weighing her down. She was naturally high-spirited, but when
high-spirited people do get depressed, they go down to the very deepest
depths; and her interview with Mr. Bircham, by its dry cheerlessness, by
its lack of human interest, had chilled her all through. If he had
even made a remark on the weather, she thought she could have liked him
better; if he had expressed an opinion on any subject, even if she had
disagreed with him, it would have been a relief; as it was, he seemed to
her more like a hard steel pen dressed in broadcloth than a man.
As to his last remark, that could only mean one thing. He did not like
to tell her to her face that she would not suit him, but, he would
communicate with her in a few days, and say it comfortably on paper.
She had never felt quite so desolate and forlorn and helpless as she
felt that day when she left the “Daily Review” office, and found herself
in the noise and bustle of Fleet Street. The midday sun blazed down upon
her in all its strength; the pavements seemed to scorch her feet; the
weary succession of hurrying, pushing, jostling passengers seemed to add
to her sense of isolation. Presently a girl stopped her, and asked the
way to Basinghall Street. She knew it well enough, but felt too utterly
stupid to direct her.
“You had better ask a policeman,” she replied, wearily.
Then, recollecting that she had several commissions to do for her
father, besides a great deal to do at the stores, she braced herself
up, and tried to forget Mr. Bircham, and to devote her whole mind to the
petty details of shopping.
The next evening she was in the study with her father when Tom
brought in a bundle of letters. One of them was for Erica. She at once
recognized Mr. Bircham's writing, and a new pang of disappointment shot
through her, though she had really lost all hope on the previous day.
This very speedy communication could only mean that his mind had been
practically made up before. She began to think of her next chance, of
the next quarter she must try, and slowly opened the unwelcome letter.
But in a moment she had sprung to her feet in an ecstasy of happiness.
“Oh, father! Oh, Tom! He will have me!”
Raeburn looked up from his correspondence, and together they read Mr.
Bircham's letter. It was quite as business-like as he himself had been
at the interview.
“Dear Madame, Having fully considered the matter, we are prepared to
offer you a place on our staff. The work required was explained to you
yesterday. For this we offer a salary of 200 pounds per annum. Should
you signify your acceptance of these terms, we will send you our usual
form of agreement. I am yours faithfully, Jacob Bircham.
“To Miss Raeburn.”
“Commend me to people who don't raise one's expectations!” said Erica,
rapturously. “Three cheers for my dear, stiff old editor!”
So that anxiety was over, and Erica was most thankful to have such a
load taken off her mind. The comfort of it helped her through a very
trying summer.