The faded paltry caricatures of faded paltry lesser lights that
confronted me from fly-blown frames on the purple walls almost made me
shiver.
"There you are, Granger," said a cheerful voice behind me. "Come and
have some dinner."
I went and had some dinner. It was seasoned by small jokes and little
personalities. A Teutonic journalist, a musical critic, I suppose,
inquired as to the origin of the meagre pheasant. Fox replied that it
had been preserved in the back-yard. The dramatic critic mumbled unheard
that some piece or other was off the bills of the Adelphi. I grinned
vacantly. Afterward, under his breath, Fox put me up to a thing or two
regarding the inner meaning of the new daily. Put by him, without any
glamour of a moral purpose, the case seemed rather mean. The dingy
smoking-room depressed me and the whole thing was, what I had, for so
many years, striven to keep out of. Fox hung over my ear, whispering.
There were shades of intonation in his sibillating. Some of those "in
it," the voice implied, were not above-board; others were, and the tone
became deferential, implied that I was to take my tone from itself.
"Of course, a man like the Right Honourable C. does it on the straight,
... quite on the straight, ... has to have some sort of semi-official
backer.... In this case, it's me, ... the _Hour_. They're a bit splitty,
the Ministry, I mean.... They say Gurnard isn't playing square ... they
_say_ so." His broad, red face glowed as he bent down to my ear, his
little sea-blue eyes twinkled with moisture. He enlightened me
cautiously, circumspectly. There was something unpleasant in the
business--not exactly in Fox himself, but the kind of thing. I wish he
would cease his explanations--I didn't want to hear them. I have never
wanted to know how things are worked; preferring to take the world at
its face value. Callan's revelations had been bearable, because of the
farcical pompousness of his manner. But this was different, it had the
stamp of truth, perhaps because it was a little dirty. I didn't want to
hear that the Foreign Minister was ever so remotely mixed up in this
business. He was only a symbol to me, but he stood for the stability of
statesmanship and for the decencies that it is troublesome to have
touched.
"Of course," he was proceeding, "the Churchill gang would like to go on
playing the stand-off to us. But it won't do, they've got to come in or
see themselves left. Gurnard has pretty well nobbled their old party
press, so they've got to begin all over again."
That was it--that was precisely it. Churchill ought to have played the
stand-off to people like us--to have gone on playing it at whatever
cost. That was what I demanded of the world as I conceived it. It was so
much less troublesome in that way. On the other hand, this was life--I
was living now and the cost of living is disillusionment; it was the
price I had to pay. Obviously, a Foreign Minister had to have a
semi-official organ, or I supposed so.... "Mind you," Fox whispered on,
"I think myself, that it's a pity he is supporting the Greenland
business. The thing's not _altogether_ straight. But it's going to be
made to pay like hell, and there's the national interest to be
considered. If this Government didn't take it up, some other would--and
that would give Gurnard and a lot of others a peg against Churchill and
his. We can't afford to lose any more coaling stations in Greenland or
anywhere else. And, mind you, Mr. C. can look after the interests of the
niggers a good deal better if he's a hand in the pie. You see the
position, eh?"
I wasn't actually listening to him, but I nodded at proper intervals. I
knew that he wanted me to take that line in confidential conversations
with fellows seeking copy. I was quite resigned to that. Incidentally, I
was overcome by the conviction--perhaps it was no more than a
sensation--that that girl was mixed up in this thing, that her shadow
was somewhere among the others flickering upon the sheet. I wanted to
ask Fox if he knew her. But, then, in that absurd business, I did not
even know her name, and the whole story would have sounded a little mad.
Just now, it suited me that Fox should have a moderate idea of my
sanity. Besides, the thing was out of tone, I idealised her then. One
wouldn't talk about her in a smoking-room full of men telling stories,
and one wouldn't talk about her at all to Fox.
The musical critic had been prowling about the room with Fox's eyes upon
him. He edged suddenly nearer, pushed a chair aside, and came toward us.
"Hullo," he said, in an ostentatiously genial, after-dinner voice, "what
are you two chaps a-talking about?"
"Private matters," Fox answered, without moving a hair.
"Then I suppose I'm in the way?" the other muttered. Fox did not answer.
"Wants a job," he said, watching the discomfited Teuton's retreat, "but,
as I was saying--oh, it pays both ways." He paused and fixed his eyes on
me. He had been explaining the financial details of the matter, in which
the Duc de Mersch and Callan and Mrs. Hartly and all these people
clubbed together and started a paper which they hired Fox to run, which
was to bring their money back again, which was to scratch their backs,
which.... It was like the house that Jack built; I wondered who Jack
was. That was it, who was Jack? It all hinged upon that.
"Why, yes," I said. "It seems rather neat."
"Of course," Fox wandered on, "you are wondering why the deuce I tell
you all this. Fact is, you'd hear it all if I didn't, and a good deal
more that isn't true besides. But I believe you're the sort of chap to
respect a confidence."
I didn't rise to the sentiment. I knew as well as he did that he was
bamboozling me, that he was, as he said, only telling me--not the truth,
but just what I should hear everywhere. I did not bear him any ill-will;
it was part of the game, that. But the question was, who was Jack? It
might be Fox himself.... There might, after all, be some meaning in the
farrago of nonsense that that fantastic girl had let off upon me. Fox
really and in a figure of speech such as she allowed herself, might be
running a team consisting of the Duc de Mersch and Mr. Churchill.