Jimmy Grierson landed in England a broken man. What was almost worse, he
was aware of the fact, and, whilst he resented the way in which Fate had
dealt with him, he had no great hopes of altering things. He had drifted
so long that, somehow, he supposed he must go on drifting. John Locke
had stopped the process for a time, and given him something to stick to,
something worth doing; but a bullet from an old Remington in the hands
of a ragged Dago, a bullet probably aimed at someone else, had sent him
adrift again. True, that same Dago had gone, a few seconds later, to
whatever place there is reserved for his kind; but that did not alter
matters; it avenged, perhaps, but it could not bring back, the one man
besides his father for whom Jimmy had ever cared, who had ever
understood him, and, therefore, been able to keep him from drifting.
His decision to return to England had been taken on the spur of the
moment, without reflection; but he held to it, because no other course
seemed to offer any better prospects. He knew, perfectly well, that
Locke's partner would not want to keep him on, and he shrank from the
ordeal of searching for employment again. He had been through it so
often before; and he had learnt, long since, that the man on the spot
only gets the temporary billets; the permanent staff is always recruited
at home. Moreover, he had the fevers of half a dozen different countries
in his system, and the shock of Locke's death brought at least one of
them to the surface. Two Dagos helped him on board ship, a wreck, and
though, physically, he was much stronger at the end of the voyage, his
nerves were far from being right.
London extended its welcome to him in the form of a drenching rain, and
he shivered a little under the thin, ready-made overcoat he had bought
from a German store on the Coast.
He had hoped that one of the family would have met the boat train, and
carried him off to a real home; but, though there had been a welcoming
hand for most of his fellow passengers, he, himself, scanned the crowd
in vain for a familiar face. Even those who had come across the ocean
with him seemed to forget him the moment they got out on to the
platform. He became the stranger at once; so he stood to one side until
they had all departed, feeling horribly alone. Still, he was home at
last, in his own country, and he tried to work up a proper sense of
elation as he waited in the station entrance, watching a porter hoisting
his battered trunks on to a cab.
It was already evening, and the stream of people was flowing inwards
through the gates of the terminus, London's workers returning to those
dreary rows of villas in the suburbs, which, probably, seemed
delightfully peaceful, almost rural, by comparison with the noise and
grime of the City. Some were closing dripping umbrellas; others, having
no umbrellas, shook the rain out of the brims of theirs hats, and turned
down their soaking coat-collars as they came under shelter. All looked
more or less draggled and weary; yet you could see that they were on
their way to their own houses, where there would be someone to welcome
them, someone who had been waiting for them. Suddenly all Jimmy's sense
of loneliness came back, and he shivered again as the cab splashed out
of the muddy station yard, towards the hotel to which he had told his
people to address their letters.
There was a letter from each of his sisters awaiting him, and he tore
them open more eagerly than was his wont. Ida, writing from her home in
Northampton, invited him to come down for a week at some vague future
date; one of the children was unwell, and until it recovered it was
impossible to fix a day. Still, they would be delighted to see him
again. Her letters always had a note of stiffness in them, which was
purely unintentional, or rather, purely natural, reflecting the one
salient point in her character.
May's letter began with an apology. They were so sorry they could not
ask him down that night; but they had a large dinner party on, and he
would have made an odd man. Doubtless, too, he would be tired after his
journey and disinclined for such a function. The following day, however,
they would be glad to have him. It was forty minutes' run from Victoria
Station, and she would send the car to meet him at the other end.
Jimmy thrust the letters into his pocket, and followed his luggage up to
his room, which was a perfect example of its kind, containing the
irreducible minimum of furniture an hotel guest could require, and
having, as its sole wall decoration, a notice imploring you to switch
out the electric light when you did not actually require it. He was
disappointed, though not annoyed. The excuses appeared genuine, if
rather inadequate and he never suspected that May had spent the
afternoon in a distressing state of anxiety lest he should change his
mind, and, instead of going to the hotel, come straight down in time for
dinner.
"There is no telling what he may be like," she said to her
sister-in-law, who was staying in the house. "We must see him first
before we introduce him to people here. Why, he may not even possess a
dress suit."
Jimmy dined in the hotel. The dining-room was very empty, and he had a
corner of it all to himself, a miserable contrast to the cheerful,
crowded saloon of the mail steamer he had quitted that morning. He ate
very little, and would not wait for coffee. He felt he must get outside
that gloomy barn of the hostelry, must go where there was life and
movement, and, and if he could find it, society.
The rain had ceased, and, as he came out of the dull side street into
the Strand, he experienced for the first time that strange thrill,
excitement, anticipation, almost exhilaration, which only the returned
wanderer who comes back to the Greatest of Cities after years of
absence, can know. When he had driven up to the hotel, the day
population had been hurrying home through the downpour; now, though the
street and the pavements were still glistening with the wet, and there
was another deluge to come, London, the night side of London, was out as
if there was no such things as rain and mud and sodden footwear.
Jimmy stood a couple of minutes, watching it, taking it all in, as
though he had never seen it before. A policeman on point duty eyed him
curiously, yet with no hint of suspicion. Most men, and practically
every woman, remembered Jimmy's face when they met him a second time. He
was not handsome, far from it; but, in some indefinable way, his grey
eyes suggested sympathy, whilst the poise of his head spoke of
determination verging on obstinacy.
He was looking at the scene as a whole, rather than at individuals, and
the policeman remarked, with a kind of grim satisfaction, that he let
the women pass him unnoticed. Even when one turned back at the next
corner and repassed him slowly, he seemed not to see her. Just as he was
turning away, however, a girl's face did catch his eye, and,
unconsciously, he stopped again. She was coming out of a restaurant a
few yards away, accompanied by a man in evening dress, though she
herself was in an ordinary walking costume. Tall and very graceful, with
dark eyes and a perfect profile, she formed a curious contrast to her
short and rather stout companion. It was only a question of a minute
before they got into a waiting hansom and driven away; but, somehow, the
incident worried Jimmy. He wondered who she was, what she was, and was
so preoccupied with her that as he walked on eastwards, he hardly
noticed that he left the Strand, with its life and hurry, for the
comparative quietude of Fleet Street by night. He had come out of the
hotel intending to have a drink at the first likely-looking bar he came
to; but he was half-way between the Griffin and Ludgate Circus before he
remembered he was thirsty.
"Hullo, Grierson, my best of piracy experts. So you've come to Fleet
Street at last, as I always said you would. Sneddon, let me introduce
Mr. Grierson, an old colleague of mine on a short-lived paper in
Shanghai. He knows more Chinese pirates than any man I ever met, not to
mention gunrunners and opium smugglers; and he's perfectly invaluable to
fill a column when the news has run short." The speaker, a man of about
Jimmy's own age, with a keen, smooth-shaven face and restless eyes,
shook hands heartily, and ordered another round of drinks.
At the sound of his voice, Jimmy's face lit up with genuine pleasure. He
had known Douglas Kelly well on the China Coast, when the other was
editing a local paper for a starvation wage, and, as Kelly said, he had
written him many a column to fill up space with when both copy and
advertisements were short. The British and American community, being
absorbed in trade, and knowing nothing of literature, and often very
little of the English language, as is the way of its kind, had failed
to see the genius under the wild and not too temperate exterior, and had
frowned on the young editor as a rather scandalous person entirely
devoid of commercial instincts; but Jimmy had always stood by him, and
when a sudden access of wealth, in the form of a draft for sixty pounds
for a series of short stories in an American magazine, had enabled Kelly
to say good-bye both to the China Coast and to his creditors, Grierson
has regretted him as much, or even more, than had the latter.
"So you've come to Fleet Street, at last," Kelly repeated. "I knew you
would. And I suppose you are going to enter into competition with me. I
believe you are the one man of whom I am really afraid."
Jimmy laughed. "I only landed to-day, and I wandered down here by
chance. As for writing, I have done very little since I saw you off on
that tramp steamer. There were two or three acquaintances of yours
watching the mail boat next day on the chance of finding you."
"Herbst, I suppose, and the other squarehead from the hotel--what was
his name?--oh, Heine, and that uncleanly Greek tailor. They were a dull
lot, and I've forgotten them long ago. Tell me about yourself. Where
have you been?"
"India, Australia, and the Dago Republics, where I saw the beginning
and the end of various presidents. I made a couple of trips on a
blockade runner, and went on a hidden treasure hunt. It sounds all
right, thrilling and exciting, yet, when I size it up in my own mind, it
comes down to a record of fever and disappointment; with a few purple
patches which were so good that, somehow, they seem to have come out of
another man's book, instead of being my own experiences."
Kelly stared into his glass. "I know," he said very quietly. "I know the
game, though I got out of it sooner than you did, being wiser, as I
always told you I was. I suppose you know I'm famous?"
Jimmy smiled; long ago, Douglas Kelly had explained to him his theory of
self-advertisement, how, once he was strong enough to do so, he intended
to go in for a regular system of blatant, unblushing egotism, which
would pay equally little regard to the feelings of others and to the
recognised canons of veracity. Now, it was evident that he was
translating his theory into practice.
"Even in the Dago countries we used to get papers containing articles of
yours," Jimmy said. "And I saw a review of one of your books. Did you
put some of our old friends of the China Coast into them?"
Douglas Kelly shook his head emphatically. "They weren't even worth
satirising. They might take it as flattery if I remembered their very
existence.... I've done what I said I would, Grierson. I'm making a
thousand a year now." He turned to his companion. "Sneddon, you might go
back to the office, and see if there's anything doing. If anyone wants
me, say I'm busy"; then when the other had gone, "How are things with
you, Jimmy?" he asked bluntly.
Jimmy laughed a little awkwardly. "Well, they shot my last employer, who
was also my best friend, out there; and I came home because I thought it
might change the luck."
"So you're broke, just as I used to be?"
"No, not exactly. I've got a few pounds left; but I've nothing to do,
and I don't know what to turn my hand to--that's all." Jimmy answered,
then as Kelly dived into his pocket and produced a cheque book, he
flushed quickly, "No, old man. If I want that, I'll come to you; but I
don't want it yet. Thanks very much, though."
Kelly shrugged his shoulders. "You're quite a change. It's generally the
other way round. Men ask me for money, and I do the refusing." Usually,
his expression was hard, almost cynical, but as he looked at Jimmy it
softened, and he seemed to grow years younger. He was back again on the
China Coast, in the days when success was a thing of the future, and
therefore greatly to be prized. "You'll do well, Grierson, you've got it
in you, just as I had. And, after all, London is the one place, the only
market worth bringing your stuff to."
"I will admit I had thought of writing, but I know how hard it is to get
a start, and----" Jimmy began; but Kelly cut him short.
"Rot! It's hard for the ruck, for the ninety and nine, who, after all,
ought to find it impossible, not merely hard. But it's different for you
and me, Jimmy Grierson, because we're not in the ruck. Of course you'll
write, for it's in you, and you would be a fool to try anything else.
You won't jump into a job right away; and you'll have to fight as I
fought. I started as a sub-editor on three pounds a week, correcting the
grammar in the copy of men who were getting five times that amount--but
I can get you a start of sorts, right away. Come around now to the
_Record_ office, and I'll introduce you to Dodgson, the editor, a
perfectly uninspired person, who ought to have been a grocer's assistant
and have sung in a chapel choir. But he has the grace to realise his
limitations, and take my advice. It will mean two guineas every now and
then for a Page Four article--a thousand words, you know."
Jimmy finished off his drink and stood up. He was beginning to
understand that, after all, there was an element of sane, cool common
sense behind Kelly's blatant self-assertiveness. It might irritate what
the other called the "ruck," but it also cowed them, and they got out of
his path; moreover, there was always the undeniable fact that the man
had genius of no common order. Jimmy had been perfectly sincere when he
said he had not come home intending to make his living by his pen. He
had thought of doing so, certainly, or rather had longed to do so; but,
like most amateurs, he had been deterred by what he had heard of the
difficulties, and had put the idea on one side. Now, however, the
proposition had come to him in a concrete form, from a man who had
succeeded, a man, moreover, who knew his capacity, and was able to judge
his prospects of success. After all, it was only part of that game of
drift which he had been playing for the last ten years; and the new
phase had this advantage--he might be able to make use of what he had
learned during the previous stages of his drifting. So he followed
Douglas Kelly out into Fleet Street, then down one of the narrow alleys,
to the _Herald_ office.
The main entrance to the _Record_ building, that through which the
general public enters, when it wishes to pay for advertisements, or
consult the files, or order back numbers, has a rather gorgeous swing
door and a quite gorgeous door-keeper in uniform with no less than four
medal ribbons on his breast; but all this is closed in by an iron grille
when normal people leave the City, and the staff has to enter through a
small door at the back, which is guarded by an old and surly porter,
over the window of whose box hangs a peremptory and uncleanly notice
forbidding anyone to smoke in the building.
Douglas Kelly ignored both the porter and the notice, and went straight
up to the second floor, where, after a moment's parley with a
weary-looking secretary, he and Jimmy were admitted to the editor's
room.
Somehow, Jimmy had always pictured the editor of a great daily as a
plethoric person with keen eyes, and a background of leather-bound
volumes; but this one was thin and insignificant; there was not a single
book in his room, and, at the first glance, Jimmy was inclined to
believe that his friend had been right when he spoke of the editor
singing in a chapel choir. Yet, after Kelly had introduced him briefly,
as an old colleague, and Dodgson had put a few curt questions, Grierson
began to change his mind.
Jimmy could talk well. He had, in an unusual degree, the art of putting
things vividly and crisply, and he possessed an extraordinary memory
for those little details which give actuality to the picture. When he
described the shooting of a presidential candidate, Dodgson could see
the man with his grimy hands and torn collar, crumpling up as the volley
from the firing party caught him. The editor himself had never come in
contact with crude realities such as this--a London County Councillor
escaping by a hair's breadth from a fully-deserved conviction for
corruption over a tramway contract was the nearest approach he had
witnessed--but he understood the value of Jimmy's reminiscences, and,
without a moment's hesitation, he asked him for an article, hinting
plainly that, if the written matter were as good as his spoken words,
the paper would be glad of many others.
Jimmy left the room with an unwonted sense of elation. Kelly had
withdrawn immediately he had introduced his friend, but he was waiting
in the doorway. "Well, what did you do?" he asked.
"He's going to give me a chance," Jimmy answered. Kelly nodded. "Of
course he will. He must. I introduced you. Don't you realise, James
Grierson, that I am a man they dare not offend, because the great
fool-public wants stuff with my signature; and, if the _Record_ upset
me, I could go across the road to the _Herald_ and, perhaps, get a
bigger salary? It's all a game of bluff, as I told you years ago in that
fan-tan shop in Shanghai. I know you won't bluff through as I have done,
because you have a streak of--what shall I call it?--early Victorian
modesty, in you; but still you will come out on top, because you've got
brains, instead of the whisky-soaked sponge which occupies the space
behind the brow of the average Fleet Street man."
"I shouldn't think you're very popular in Fleet Street," Jimmy remarked
grimly.
Douglas Kelly shrugged his shoulders. "The ruck would dislike me anyway,
because I know more than it does. Still, it need not worry. I am going
to quit journalism, and go in for fiction soon, as you will do in due
course.... What's the time?" They had come out into Fleet Street again,
and he glanced upwards at the _Telegraph's_ clock. "Half-past ten. It's
too late to take you down to stay at my place, as I can't telephone to
my wife. So I may as well stay in town. We'll wander round a bit, and
after closing time, I'll take you up to one of my clubs."
"Your wife. So you're married?" Jimmy smiled, as though at some
recollection. "You seem to have done pretty well all round; whilst I am
still where I was."
The other took him up sharply, "Still where you were. Why, you've got
your head full of copy, and you're right at your market, instead of
being on that forsaken China Coast. Well, let's have a drink here for a
start."