WHICH INTRODUCES AN EDITOR
WHEELTON, an industrial town of some importance, lies less than an
hour's journey by rail from Stratford. It is not exactly a home of
learning, nor has it given any distinguished men to literature or
science, but it boasts four weekly newspapers and a small daily sheet,
which would appear to be more than the inhabitants require in the shape
of local reading matter, for, with one exception, the newspapers of the
town have a hard struggle for existence.
At the time when Henry Charles and his father made their first journey
thither the journalistic conditions were not quite so straitened, as the
evening paper and one of the weeklies had not come to increase
competition; but even then the _Guardian_ was the least successful of
the three.
The office of Mr. Springthorpe's journal was situated up a flight of
narrow stairs, the shop on the street front having been let to a
pork-butcher for the sake of the rent. On the first floor were the
editor's room, the reporters' room, and another small apartment that
served as the general office, and contained a staff of one weedy young
man with downy side-whiskers, and a perky little office boy.
Up a further crazy stair the composing-room was reached, and here five
men and several boys put into type what was sent from the rooms below.
The printing was done in premises on the ground floor behind the
pork-butcher's, extended by the addition of a rather rickety wooden
outbuilding. By no means an establishment to impress a visitor with the
importance of the journal here produced, or to give a beginner any
exaggerated idea of the dignity of journalism. Still, the massive gilt
letters proclaiming THE GUARDIAN above the pork-butcher's had the power
to make Henry's blood tingle when first he saw them.
Up the stair he followed his father, with much fluttering of the heart,
but reassured by the confident and cheerful look on the face of Edward
John, who went about the business as outwardly calm as if he were buying
a fresh stock of stationery.
The office-boy showed the visitors into a room to the left of the
counter, on the door of which the pregnant word EDITOR, printed in bold
letters on a slip of paper, had been pasted but recently, judging by its
cleanness, as contrasted with the soiled appearance of everything else.
The editor's room was plainly furnished, not to say shabbily, despite
the fact that it figured frequently in the _Guardian_ gossip columns
under the attractive title of "The Sanctum." In the middle of the floor
stood a large writing-table, from which the leather covering had peeled
off, exposing the wood beneath like a plane tree with its bark
half-shed. On the table lay, in picturesque confusion, bundles of
galley-slips, clippings from newspapers, sheets of "copy" paper, all
partially secured in their positions by small slabs of lead as
paper-weights.
The waste-paper basket to the left of the table had overflowed, and the
floor around was strewn with cut newspapers and crumpled sheets of
manuscript. On the walls hung two large maps, one showing the railways
of England and the other the Midland counties. Above the fireplace a
printer's calendar was nailed. Three soiled and battered haircloth
chairs completed the furniture of the room when we have added a damaged
arm-chair, cushioned with a pile of old papers. This was the editor's
chair. Its intrinsic value was probably half-a-crown, but to the regular
readers of the _Guardian_ it must have seemed as priceless as the gold
stool of Ashanti, for they were accustomed to read two columns every
week headed "From the Editor's Chair."
The short, thick-set person, with the slightly bald head and distinctly
red nose above a heavy black moustache, which trailed its way down each
side of a clean-shaven chin and drooped over into space, was the editor
himself. With a briar pipe, burnt at one side, stuck in his mouth, and
puffing vigorously, he sat there in his shirt sleeves, and his pen flew
swiftly over the sheets of paper that lay before him.
When Mr. Charles and his son entered, the editor laid down his pipe and
pen, and rising from his chair, said in the most affable way:
"Ah, I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Charles; and this is your son Henry,
of whose ability I have already heard."
Shaking hands with each, he pointed them to seats and resumed his own.
"So Henry is ambitious of embarking on a journalistic career," he
remarked, as he lifted his pipe again; adding, "I hope you don't mind my
smoking. I find a weed a great incentive to thought."
Mr. Springthorpe always spoke like a leading article, and it was noticed
by those who knew him best that on the occasions when his nose was
particularly ruddy and his utterance somewhat thick, his flow of
language and the stateliness of his words were even more marked than
when one could not detect the odour of the tap-room in his vicinity.
"Yes, 'Enry is anxious to get on a noospaper," Mr. Charles replied. "And
Mr. Trevor Smith has written this letter about him for you to read."
The editor reached out and took the letter with a great show of
interest, reading it carefully, as though it were a document of much
importance, while Henry sat fumbling with his hat, conscious that he had
again arrived at a critical moment in his career.
"This is very nattering indeed, Mr. Charles," said the editor at length,
"and I attach great weight to the opinion of Mr. Trevor Smith, who is an
able and promising member of my staff."
"Then you think that 'Enry might suit you?"
"I have little doubt that he would prove a worthy addition to the ranks
of journalism, and if I had any urgent need of a new member on my
reportorial staff, I should willingly offer him an engagement. But, as I
think I explained to you in my letter, I have not at present any
pressing need for literary assistance."
Henry's face clouded as he listened, but brightened the next instant,
when Mr. Springthorpe continued:
"It would, however, be a pity not to hold out the hand of encouragement
to so bright a young man as your son, and I should be delighted to have
the privilege of initiating him into the mysteries of newspaper work if
you are prepared to pay a premium, and to let him serve the first six
months without salary."
"There need be no difficulty about that," said Mr. Charles, "and I am
prepared to pay you now a reasonable sum for any trouble you will take
with him. How much would you expect?"
"Well, it all depends. I have had pupils who have paid as much as a
hundred pounds." Edward John sighed, and Henry felt a tightening at the
throat. "Fifty is what I usually expect." The visitors breathed more
freely. "But I feel that in Henry we have a young man of peculiar
aptitude, who would soon make himself a useful colleague of my other
assistants; and that being so, I should be content with half the
amount."
"That's a bargain, then," said Mr. Charles, entirely relieved, as he
took out his cheque-book and filled up a cheque in favour of Mr. Martin
Springthorpe for twenty-five pounds. "Of course, I s'pose you give 'im a
salary after the first six months," he added, when he handed the cheque
to the editor.
"I shall be only too happy to adequately remunerate his services when
the period of probation is terminated," Mr. Springthorpe assured him,
placing the precious paper carefully in his pocket-book.
"And when would you like me to begin, sir?" asked Henry, who had
scarcely opened his mouth since entering the room, the editor's shrewd
eye for character, together with Mr. Trevor Smith's valuable
testimonial, being all that Mr. Springthorpe had whereby to arrive at
his flattering estimate of the young man's brightness and peculiar
aptitude for journalism.
"Let me see, now--this is the 18th of July. Suppose we say that you
commence your duties here on Monday, the 25th. How would that suit you?"
"That would fit in nicely, 'Enry, my lad, wouldn't it?" said Mr.
Charles.
"Yes, sir," said the new reporter to the chief, who had been bought with
a price. "I could start on that day, as there is nothing to keep me at
Stratford."
"Do you know anything of shorthand?" the editor asked, as an
afterthought.
"A little, sir; and I am studying it every night just now."
"That's right, my boy, wire in at your shorthand; a reporter is of
little use without that accomplishment. To one of your ability it will
be easy to acquire. I picked it up myself in a fortnight, and even now,
although I seldom use it, I could still take my turn at a verbatim with
the best of them."
The great business completed, Mr. Charles and his son set out to look
for lodgings for Henry, being recommended to the mother of one of the
other reporters, who let apartments.
On the way back to Stratford, after having settled this little matter,
Edward John waxed as enthusiastic as his son in picturing the
possibilities which he had thus opened up for Henry. "Tis money makes
the mare to go, my lad," he said. "Five-and-twenty pounds is a goodish
bit out o' my savings, but I've always said you'd 'ave your chance, no
matter what it cost me."
"I hope that I'll be able to prove the money hasn't been wasted, dad."
"I'm sure o' that, 'Enry--if you only wire in at your work and show the
editor the stuff that's in you. Just fancy what old Miffin and the
others will say when they 'ear that 'Enry Chawles is a reporter on the
_Guardian_!"
"I mean to study very hard, get up my shorthand, and to write as much as
ever I can when I join the staff. But of course I shan't stay in
Wheelton all my life. There's better papers than the _Guardian_, you
know."
"That's the true spirit, lad; always look ahead. If I hadn't been
looking ahead all these years, where would the twenty-five pounds ha'
come from, and the money that's to keep you for the next six months?"
"I'm sure I don't know what could have been done without it. I don't
think opportunities are as plentiful as we are told."
Henry had learned a little since that day he rode to Stratford with the
carrier.
"Didn't think much of the office, though. Did you, 'Enry?"
"No," he admitted somewhat unwillingly, "it wasn't so fine as I had
expected; but perhaps it is as good as they need."
"And nobody needs anythink better than that," which summed up in a
sentence Edward John's philosophy of life and the secret of his
financial soundness.
The few days remaining to Henry in Stratford went past all too slowly,
despite the jubilation of Mr. Trevor Smith at the success of his
promising _protege_, and Henry's application to the study of shorthand,
with which most of his time at the book-shop had been occupied of late.
Mr. Griggs and Pemble he left without a pang, the former still concerned
about his poultry, and the latter still cultivating his moustache; but
he was sorry to say good-bye to Mrs. Filbert and the irrepressible
Trevor, who would have made the success of his proposal an excuse to
borrow a fourth half-crown, were it not that the memory of the unpaid
three had better not be reawakened when Henry was going away.
His journey to Wheelton found him with hopes scarcely so high as those
he had cherished on his way to Stratford some three months before, but
he was at least fortified with some measure of that common sense which
only rises in the mind as the illusions of youth begin to sink.
It was not thought necessary for him to revisit Hampton Bagot before
removing to Wheelton--his face was still turned away from home. Thus far
he had been marking time merely; but now he was on the march in
earnest.