AN INTERESTING TALK.
“The Courier” was now an established fact. As a newspaper it was as much
a revelation to the journalists as to the general public. London had
taken to it from the first moment of its issue. The provinces, instead
of following their usual course of waiting to see what London did, took
their own initiative, and adopted the new paper at once. Every instinct
about the ideal paper, felt and nursed during the waiting years by Tom
Hammond, had been true instinct. He had always felt them to be true; now
he realized the fact. He was a proud man, a happy man.
One curious feature of the new journal had attracted much attention,
even before the publication of the first issue. In his “Foreword,” as he
had termed it, in a full page announcement that appeared in three of the
leading London dailies, Tom Hammond had said:
“An important feature of the ‘Courier’ will be the item or items (as the
case may be) which will be found each day under the heading, ‘From the
Prophet’s Chamber.’ A greater man than the editor of ‘The Courier’ once
said, ‘Every editor of a newspaper ought to have a strain of the seer in
his composition. He ought to have the gift of prophecy up to a certain
point. He ought to be so thoroughly conversant with the history of his
own and every other nation that when history is on the point of repeating
itself—as it has a habit of doing,—he may not be caught altogether
napping.’ It is the unexpected that happens, we say.
“True, but there are many of the so-called happenings of the unexpected
that to the spirit of the seer will have been expected and more than
half-prophesied.
“Now, while we propose that the whole tone of ‘The Courier’ shall show
the spirit of the seer in a measure, we shall endeavour to make the
particular column to which we are now alluding essentially new. In it
we shall deal with every class of subject likely to prove mentally
arrestive to our readers, and shall make it prophetic up to the limits
of our capacities as man, citizen and editor. How far the possession of
the quality of the seer will be found in us we must leave the future—and
our readers—to decide. But we certainly anticipate that ‘The Prophet’s
Chamber’ column will be one of the most popular features of what we shall
aim to make the most popular paper of the day.”
Tom Hammond was no believer in luck. He had left nothing to chance in the
production of his paper. There was not a department left to subordinates
which he did not personally assure himself was being carried out on the
best, the safest, lines. For weeks he literally lived on the spot where
his great paper was to be produced, taking his meals and sleeping at an
hotel close by the huge building that housed “The Courier.”
He saw very little of Sir Archibald Carlyon during these weeks, and
nothing at all of George, or the fair American, Madge Finisterre. George
was in Scotland; Madge on the Continent.
His thoughts often turned to the American girl, and his eye brightened
and his pulse quickened whenever he heard of her from Sir Archibald.
Once he had been permitted by Sir Archibald to read a gossipy letter sent
by her to the old baronet. He laughed over a quotation in that letter.
“I am not like the Chicago girl,” she wrote, “of whom our Will Carleton
writes, who, telling all about her tour in ‘Urop,’ says,
“Old Scotland? Yes, all in our power,
We did there to be through;
We stopped in Glasgow one whole hour,
Then straight to ‘Edinborough.’
At Abbotsford we made a stay
Of half-an-hour precisely.
(The ruins all along the way
Were ruined very nicely.)
“We ‘did’ a mountain in the rain,
And left the others undone,
Then took the ‘Flying Scotchman’ train,
And came by night to London.
Long tunnels somewhere on the line
Made sound and darkness deeper;
No; English scenery is not fine
Viewed from a Pullman sleeper.
“Oh, Paris! Paris! Paris! ’Tis
No wonder, dear, that you go
So far into ecstasies
About that Victor Hugo!
He paints the city, high and low,
With faithful pen and ready.
(I think, my dear, I ought to know,
We drove there two hours steady.”)
“I feel,” Madge had written, “that one wants a life-time to ‘do’ the
Continent.”
Tom Hammond’s thoughts often flew to the gay girl. This morning, having
seen a review of Carleton’s latest book of ballads, he had been reminded
of her, and he laid down his pen a moment, as he gave himself up to a
little reverie about her. An announcement aroused him.
“Miss Finisterre and Mr. Carlyon, sir.”
He smiled to himself. “Talk of angels, etc.,” he mused.
The next moment he was greeting his callers. Madge Finisterre looked, in
Tom Hammond’s eyes, more radiant now than ever.
“Fancy, Mr. Hammond,” she laughed, when the greetings were over, “George
and I met at Dover! He had come south to see a friend off from Dover, and
was on the pier when I landed from the Calais boat. We’ve been down to
that dear old country house, but I wanted to do some shopping, and to see
how you looked as editor-in-chief and general boss of the biggest daily
paper in the world.”
Tom Hammond’s eyes flashed with a pleased light at her confession, which
implied that she had thought of him, even as he had thought of her. He
noted, too, how an extra shade of colour warmed the clear skin of her
cheeks as she made her confession.
“Because,” she went on, “all the world declares that ‘The Courier’ is the
premier paper of the world, and everyone who is anyone—in the know of
things, I mean—knows that Mr. Tom Hammond is ‘The Courier.’”
The talk, for a few minutes, was “shop.”
“You don’t go in for a column of comic,” Madge presently said. “If you
did, I could give you an item, we, George and I, heard in the train as we
ran up to town. There were two of your English parsons in our carriage,
talking in that high-faluting note that always reminds me of your
high-pitched church service,—‘dearly-beloved-brethren’ note.
“Well, the two parsons were telling yarns one against the
other—chestnuts were cheap, I assure you,—and one of them told a story
he tacked on to General Booth—the last time I heard it, it was told of
Spurgeon. He said that the General was going down Whitechapel, and,
seeing the people pouring into a show, and wondering what there was so
powerfully attractive to the masses in these shows, he determined to go
into this particular one. It was advertised as a ‘Museum of Biblical
Curiosities.’ Just as he got in, the showman was exhibiting a very rusty
old sword, and saying,
“‘Now, yere’s a werry hinterestin’ hobject. This is the sword wot Balaam
’it ’is hass wiv, ’cos ’ee wouldn’t go.’ Booth speaks up, and says,
“‘Hold hard there, my friend; you’re getting a little mixed. Balaam
hadn’t got a sword. He said, “Would that I had a sword.”’
“‘That’s all right, guv’nor,’ cried the showman; ‘this is the sword ’ee
wished ’ee ’ad.’”
The girl’s mimicry of the coster-showman’s speech was inimitable, and the
two men laughed as much at her telling as at the tale itself.
George Carlyon got up from his seat, saying, “But I say, you two, do you
mind if I leave you to amuse each other for an hour? I want, very much,
to run down to the club. I’ll come back for you, Madge, or meet you
somewhere.”
“Bless the boy!” she laughed. “Do you think I was reared in an incubator,
or in your Mayfair? Haven’t you learned that, given a Yankee girl’s got
dollars under her boots to wheel on, it ain’t much fuss for her to skate
through this old country of yours, nor yet through Europe, come to that,
even though she has no more languages under her tongue than good plain
Duchess county American. I told the ‘boys’ that before I left home.”
George Carlyon laughed, as, accepting his release, he nodded to the pair
and left the room.
It was a strangely new experience to Tom Hammond, to be left alone with a
beautiful and charming woman like Madge Finisterre.
The picture she made, as she moved round the room looking at the framed
paintings, all gifts from his artist friends, came to him as a kind of
revelation. When he had met her that day in the Embankment hotel, he
had been charmed with her beauty and her frank, open, unconventionality
of manner. He had thought of her many times since—only that very day, a
moment before her arrival,—thought of her as men think of a picture or a
poem which has given them delight. But now he found her appealing to him.
She was a woman, a beautiful, attractive woman. She suggested sudden
thoughts of how a woman, loved, and returning that love, might affect his
life, his happiness.
Her physical grace and beauty, the exquisite fit of her costume, the
perfect harmony of it—all this struck him now. But the woman in her
appealed strongest to him.
“Awfully good, this sketch of street arabs!” she turned to say, as she
stood before a clever bit of black-and-white drawing.
An end of a lace scarf she was wearing caught in a nail in the wall. He
sprang forward to release the scarf. It was not readily done, for his
fingers became infected with a strange nervousness. Once their hands met,
their fingers almost interlocked. A curious little thrill went through
him. He lifted his eyes involuntarily, and met her glance. A warm colour
shot swiftly into her face. And he was conscious at the same moment that
his own cheeks burned.
“I guess I’ll sit down before I do any more mischief,” she laughed.
Woman-like, she was quicker to get at ease than he was.
“Do you know, Mr. Hammond,” she went on, as she seated herself in a
revolving armchair, “I just wanted very much to see how you were fixed up
here, and how you looked now that you are a big man.”
He made a deprecatory little gesture.
“Oh, but you are a really great man,” she went on. “I have heard some big
people talk of you, and say——”
She leaned back, and smiled merrily at him, as she went on,
“Well, I guess if there’s only a shadow of truth in the old saying, then
your ears must often have burned.”
Madge Finisterre gave the chair in which she was sitting a half twist.
“Why don’t you British people go in for rockers?” she asked. “I simply
can’t enjoy your English homes to the full, for want of a good rocker,
wherever I go.”
An indiarubber bulb lay close to his hand. He pressed it without her
noting the movement. A clerk suddenly appeared. Hammond looked across at
Madge, with an “Excuse me, Miss Finisterre, one moment.”
He drew a sheet of notepaper towards him. The paper was headed with “The
Courier” title and address.
“Send me, at once, unpacked and ready for immediate use, the best
American drawing-room rocking-chair you have in stock. Send invoice, cash
will follow,” etc.
That was what he wrote. He enclosed it in an envelope, then on a separate
slip of paper he wrote:—
“Take a cab, there and back, to Wallis’s, Holborn Circus. See how smart
you can be; bring the chair, ordered, back with you.”
From his purse he took a four-shilling piece, and gave the young fellow
the note, the slip of instructions, and the coin.
As the attendant left the room, he turned again to Madge, who, utterly
unsuspicious of the errand on which he had sent his employee, was amusing
herself with a copy of “Punch.” She looked up from the paper as the door
closed.
“I like ‘The Courier’ immensely, Mr. Hammond,” she cried. There was a
rare warmth of admiration in her tone.
“Thank you, Miss Finisterre!” His eyes said more than his words, “what do
you specially like in it?” he asked; “or is your liking of a more general
character?”
“I do like it from a general standpoint,” she replied; “I think it the
best paper in the world. But especially do I like your own particular
column, ‘From a Prophet’s Chamber.’ But, Mr. Hammond, about the Jew—you
are going in strong for him, aren’t you?”
“From the ordinary newspaper point, yes,” he said. “I cannot quite
recall how my mind was first switched on to the subject, but I do know
this—that the more I study the past history of the race, and the future
predictions concerning it, the more amazed I am, how, past, present, and
future, the Jews, as a nation, are interwoven with everything political,
musical, artistic—everything, in fact. And I wonder, equally, that we
journalists, as a whole—I speak, of course, as far as I know my kinsmen
in letters—should have thought and written so little about them.
“Take their ubiquitousness, Miss Finisterre,” went on Hammond. “There
does not appear to have been an empire in the past that has not had its
colony of Jews. By which I do not mean a Ghetto, simply, a herding of
sordid-living, illiterate Hebrews, but a study colony of men and women,
who, by sheer force of intellect, of brain power, have obtained and
maintained the highest positions, the greatest influence.
“Why, in China, even, isolated, conservative China, before Christ was
born in Bethlehem, the Jews were a prosperous, ubiquitous people,
worshipping the one God, Jehovah, amidst all the foulness of Chinese
idolatries.”
Madge Finisterre listened with rapt interest. The man before her, fired
with his subject, talked marvellously. A good listener helps to make a
good talker, and Tom Hammond talked well.
“It is not simply that they practically hold the wealth of the world in
their hands, that they are the world’s bankers, but they are dominating
our press, our politics.”
With glowing picture of words he poured out a flood of wondrous fact and
illustration, winding up presently with:
“Then you cannot kill the Jew, you cannot wipe him out. Persecution has
had the effect of stunting his growth, so that the average Britisher is
several inches taller than the average Jew. But the life of the Hebrew
is indestructible. Sometimes of late I have asked myself this question,
as I have reviewed the history of the dealings of so-called Christianity
with the Semitic race—Has Christianity been afraid of the Jews, or why
has she sought to stamp them out?”
The pair had been so engrossed with their talk that they had lost all
count of time. A half-hour had slipped by since Tom Hammond had sent his
messenger to Wallis’s. The young fellow suddenly appeared at the door.
“Got it, Charlie?”
Without waiting for a reply to his question, the editor bounded from his
seat and passed outside. Thirty seconds later the door opened again, and
he appeared, bearing a splendid rocker in his arms.
Before she fully realized the wonder of the whole thing, Madge found
herself seated in the rocking-chair. Swaying backwards and forwards, and
blushing and smiling, she cried:
“You are a wonderful man, Mr. Hammond!”
“You said you could never fully enjoy our English houses for want of a
rocker. Now, however ‘angelic’ your visits to this room may be, you shall
have one inducement to slip in—a rocker.”
She was beginning her thanks again, when he interrupted with:
“But, excuse me, Miss Finisterre, what about some tea? Shall we go out
and get some, or would you prefer that I should order it in here?”
“Oh, here, by all means! I can have tea at a restaurant every day of
my life, but with a real London lion—a real live editor—and in his own
special den. Why, it may never fall to my lot again. Oh, here, by all
means!” she cried, excitedly.
He squeezed that rubber bulb again. To the lad Charlie, who appeared, he
gave a written order to a neighbouring restaurant. Twenty minutes later
the tea was in the room.
Madge officiated with the teapot. Hammond watched her every movement.
A truly pretty, graceful girl never looks handsomer to a man than when
presiding at a tea-table. Tom Hammond thought Madge had never looked more
charming. The meal was a very enjoyable one, and as she poured out his
second cup he paid her a pretty compliment, adding:
“To see you thus, Miss Finisterre, makes one think what fools men are not
to——”
He paused abruptly. She flashed a quick glance of enquiry at him.
“Not to what, Mr. Hammond?”
“I wonder,” he replied, “if I ought to say what I left unsaid?”
“Why not?” she asked.
“I don’t know why I should not,” he laughed. “I was going to say that, to
have a bright, beautiful, graceful woman like Madge Finisterre pouring
out tea for him, makes a man think what a fool he is not to marry.”
His tone and glance were alike full of meaning. She could not mistake
him. Her colour heightened visibly. Her eyes drooped before his ardent
gaze. The situation became tense and full of portent.
The opening of the door at that instant changed everything. George
Carlyon had returned. At the same moment a wire was brought to Hammond,
together with a sheaf of letters—the afternoon mail.