Jimmy awoke in the morning with a slight headache, and a fixed
determination not to go out again with Douglas Kelly. True, it had cost
him nothing, Kelly having carried him from one club to another, cashing
a cheque at each, and spending the proceeds with such freedom as to
evoke a protest from his guest.
"I want to impress you," Kelly had retorted. "I want to show you how
well I've done. I always do the same when I get hold of any of you
fellows from out there. Yet," he paused and looked at the other keenly,
"you're such a queer beggar, that I don't suppose you are impressed. I
needn't have tried it on you, after all," but, none the less, he had
declined to let his companion go, and it had been past three when a
sleepy night porter admitted Jimmy to the hotel, Kelly having declared
his intention of taking a room at the club they had visited last.
Jimmy drew up his blind to find the sun shining in a cloudless sky, and
his spirits went up at once. As a result of the deluge of the night
before, London looked almost clean and bright, and he began to wonder
at his depression of the previous evening. After all, it was very good
to be home again, and, thanks to Kelly, he had already made a small
start, which might lead to much bigger things. Kelly, himself, had
arrived in England with nothing, an unknown man.
From Kelly, his mind worked backwards to the girl he had seen enter the
cab. It was curious how her face seemed fixed in his memory. The thought
of her, and of her possible story, worried him all the time he was
shaving, and he found himself wishing he had never noticed her. Somehow,
he did not like the look of her companion, who seemed to treat her with
a very perfunctory sort of courtesy, verging on familiarity, or even
contempt. He was still thinking of her when he went down to breakfast;
but the sight of a copy of the _Record_, the first real English daily he
had seen for many years, a paper, moreover, which wanted him to write
for it, changed the current of his thoughts, and he forgot all about the
girl.
Dodgson had told him there was no hurry for the article, any time within
the next week or so would do, and he, himself, knew that it would be
impossible to write in the dreary atmosphere of the hotel; so he decided
to go down to the City and call on his brother, Walter. There was no
one else he wanted to see in town. All his former acquaintances had
dropped clean out of his life, or, rather, he had dropped out of theirs;
and, probably, he could not have found one of them, even had he wished
to do so, which was not the case. He was a very lonely man, he told
himself; and yet he did not feel bitter about that fact as he had done
on the previous night; his meeting with Kelly, and the new hope with
which the other had infused him, had changed his views greatly. Now, it
seemed as if he had a prospect of doing something definite, of starting
on a new career, his success in which would depend entirely on his own
exertions.
Walter Grierson was a short, clean-shaven man with a decidedly pompous
manner. He had been very successful in his profession, owing to his
energy, rather than to his mental capacity, and he regarded unsuccessful
men as little better than criminals. His whole outlook on life was
severe, except in his own home, where he was a generous husband and
indulgent father. Never having been tempted himself, he had no sympathy
with those who fell, being quite unable to understand them. Steadiness
was the virtue he most admired in younger men, meaning by that term the
capacity for choosing and sticking to an orthodox method of livelihood
and for maintaining an unwavering respectability of conduct. Jimmy's
career, the wanderings from one country to another, the continual
changes of occupation, had been a very real grief to him, violating as
it did every canon of his creed. No one could call his brother steady.
Walter Grierson was engaged when Jimmy called, and the visitor spent
half an hour glancing round the gloomy office, and wondering how anyone
could be content to spend his days in such a place. He wanted to smoke,
but something in the attitude of the clerks restrained him, and he put
his cigarette case back into his pocket. He was not sure about the three
younger ones, whether they would be scandalised, or whether the smell of
the tobacco would arouse cruel longings which could not be satisfied
until the too-brief luncheon hour came round; but there was no mistaking
the reprobation in the old managing clerk's face. Even their richest
clients knew better than to disturb the microbes on the upper shelves
with their smoke. Those same clients were all City men, dignified, and
understanding the ways of the City, which are very different from those
of San Francisco or Johannesburg. In London, it is only foreigners and
green-fruit brokers and such like doubtful people, with neither
self-respect nor position to maintain, who break the City's law.
Stockbrokers are, of course, men apart from the rest. They draw most of
their customers from a class which knows nothing of business; and must
therefore be humoured; moreover, a little eccentricity, a
lightheartedness, verging at times on the clownish, is useful, for, if
duly reported, it procures the Stock Exchange a free advertisement in
the Press. Even Mr. Marlow had been known to play football with a silk
hat and wave a little Union Jack, when the news of a British victory,
which meant an improvement in the Market, was recorded in a special
edition. But his brother-in-law, Walter Grierson, had never done any of
these things, having neither the need, nor the desire, for
advertisement. Jimmy did not know the City, but he knew a good deal of
mankind, and he gleaned something of the spirit and traditions of that
office, as his eyes wandered from the rows of black, shiny deed boxes to
the equally shiny pate of the managing clerk, and then to the
drab-looking girl typist, pale-faced and narrow-chested, who seemed to
finger the key-board as though the maddening click of her abominable
machine had killed any individuality she might once have had, and turned
her into a mere part of the mechanism of the City. The one spot of
colour in the office was an insurance company's calendar, and, even on
that, the design was crude and the inscription little more than a dull
list of figures. Jimmy sighed, pitying them all. He did not know that
those who have never experienced the crude things of life seldom have
any desire for them. Being prosaic, they are satisfied with prosaic
surroundings, which is a fortunate thing in an essentially prosaic age.
There is very little room for romance in a world which gauges success by
the measure of a reputed bank balance.
At last, the client, who proved to have side whiskers and an
ivory-handled umbrella, took his departure, and Walter Grierson came out
in his wake. The solicitor greeted Jimmy, if not warmly, at least
sincerely; then sat down and slowly took stock of the returned wanderer.
"You look better than I expected from what May told me you had said in
your last letter. Yes, you look decidedly better. Still, you have
changed a great deal, changed in many ways." He adjusted his gold-rimmed
pince-nez, in order to make a closer scrutiny.
Jimmy laughed. "Well, you must remember, it's ten years since you saw me
last, and I wasn't very old then. You, yourself, look exactly the same.
I should have known you anywhere. How are Janet and the children?"
Walter Grierson's face brightened perceptibly. He was a family man above
everything, and he gave his brother very full details. "Let me see,
you've never seen George and Christine, have you?" he asked at the end
of the recital.
Jimmy shook his head. "No, I have seven or eight unknown nephews and
nieces to inspect, or I'm not sure that it isn't nine. I've rather lost
count."
The elder man frowned slightly; it was not quite the thing to refer to
members of the family in that flippant way. Surely Jimmy could recollect
the number of his sister's children. He gave the tally of the latter,
with their names and ages, and with guarded comments on their
peculiarities, from which Jimmy gathered that they were decidedly
inferior to the little Walter Griersons. And after that there came a
pause, short in duration, certainly, but very significant. After ten
years' separation the brothers had exhausted their subjects of mutual
interest in little over ten minutes.
Jimmy fingered the cigarette case in his pocket, knowing the consolation
and the wisdom to be found in tobacco; but he did not like to produce
it, and he had already noted that Walter's room was innocent of any
ash-tray; so, instead, he racked his brains for a new topic of
conversation. At last:
"You're the sole partner here now, aren't you?" he asked.
Walter nodded. "Yes, Jardine died three years back, and I don't want
anyone else till I can take in Ralph, my eldest boy. He has a nasty
cold, or you would have seen him in the office." He shook his head, as
though at the thought of the dangerous after-effects of colds, and it
struck Jimmy that, for a man of forty-three or forty-four, Walter was
very old and stuffy. He, himself, often felt old and more than a little
weary, but in quite another way. He was not snuffly and solemn in
consequence; it was only that he knew his youth was slipping from him
fast, perhaps had already slipped from him, as is the case with every
European who stays too long in countries made for the coloured man, and
it irritated him to think that, if success ever did come to him, it
would probably be when he had lost the capacity for enjoyment.
"Have you made any plans for your future movements?" Walter asked
suddenly.
Jimmy started. "Well, yes--at least, last night I met an old friend of
mine, and he advised me to go in for writing. I've done a bit of it, of
course, and this man, Douglas Kelly--I expect you know his name." Walter
shook his head; he never read anything except the _Times_. "He's a man
who's made a big hit, and he knows what I can do. So I think of taking
his advice. The _Record_ has already asked me for an article."
Once more, Walter Grierson frowned, and then he sighed. The only
journalists he had ever met had been connected with financial papers,
and his negotiations with them had taught him the subtleties of
scientific blackmail. Being a man of little imagination, though of
retentive memory, he judged the whole profession by the two or three
members of it, or rather pseudo-members, he had been unfortunate enough
to encounter professionally.
"I am sorry to hear your decision, Jimmy," he said. "Very sorry, indeed.
You will find it a most precarious way of life, and it will bring you
into contact with highly undesirable people. I had hoped, we had all
hoped, that now you had returned you would settle down to something
steady. Personally, I think you will be making a great mistake. But I
suppose you know your own business best." He shook his head, as though,
in his own mind, he was quite sure Jimmy did not know anything of the
sort.
Then, once more, there was an awkward pause, and it was a relief to both
of the brothers when the junior clerk came in with a card in his hand.
Walter Grierson glanced at the name, then got up. "I am sorry, Jimmy;
but this is a man with whom I had made an appointment. I would ask you
to lunch with me, but there is more than a probability of my having to
take him out. You must come down and stay with us soon. Janet told me to
give you her love, and ask you to fix a date. I am very glad you called.
Give my love to May when you see her to-night. And, Jimmy," he hesitated
a little, "of course it is not for me to advise you; but I do wish you
would reconsider that decision of yours. It's a most precarious calling,
most precarious, and, I am afraid, one full of temptations." There was
perfectly genuine concern in his voice, and yet, within a couple of
minutes, Jimmy and his affairs were clean out of his mind, and he was
deep in the business of his client.
Jimmy lighted a cigarette on the landing outside his brother's office;
but neither the tobacco, nor the drink he had a few minutes later, could
alleviate his sense of disappointment. He was a very lonely man.