IN LONDON TOWN
THE directors of the _Leader_ were more gracious about his resignation
than Henry had expected. Evidently, although quite satisfied with his
work, they did not apprehend any insurmountable difficulty in securing a
successor. The manager hinted (after Henry's going was certain) that
rather than have had the trouble of changing editors, they might even
have arranged to advance his salary--supreme proof that he had not been
without his merits in the eyes of his employers. Mr Jones, by virtue of
his superior years, took leave to warn him of the gravity of the step he
was taking, and assured him that at L350 a year in London he would be no
better off than he was with L100 less in Laysford. For one brief moment
Flo's desire that he should stay passed through his mind, but in his
heart he knew that it was not entirely a matter of money, and he set his
teeth to "Now or never."
When it had been arranged that he was to leave the _Leader_, the manager
exhibited almost indecent haste in appointing his successor, and was
careful to remind him that although, as events turned out, he would be
free to go in a month's time, the Company was entitled to at least three
months' notice, and possibly six. Mr. Jones had a habit of making
generosity fit in with business; he did not mention that he had secured
a successor who was to receive L50 a year less than Henry had been
getting. At one time an editor of the _Leader_ had been paid as much as
L750 a year, but that was in the days of a showy start, when money went
out more rapidly than it came in, and during the succeeding years the
pay-books would show a steady decline in the rate of editorial salaries.
By strict limitation of payments, Mr. Jones was steadily increasing the
dividends of the shareholders, and steadily depreciating the standard of
the staff. The day that Henry left, the literary touch which Adrian
Grant and a limited few had noticed in the _Leader_ under his editorship
disappeared, and the market and police intelligence again gave the tone
of the sheet.
The most serious feature of his removal was the conduct of Miss Winton,
who gave him more than one bad quarter of an hour for his selfishness in
actually accepting the engagement "without a single thought of her." Flo
harped so steadily on this note, that Henry was half-persuaded he was
indeed a shamefully selfish young man; and when he closely examined his
conduct, he wondered whether the satisfaction with which he had
reported his fortune to his father arose from filial affection or from
downright vanity.
The upshot of Miss Winton's exposition of his selfishness and her
tearful protestations against his deserting her was a formal engagement,
where only an "understanding" had existed before. This seemed to still
her anxious heart, but Henry had made the proposition with none of the
fervour with which more than once in fancy he had seen himself begging
for her hand. In truth, his heart misgave him, and he did not mention
the matter in any of his letters home. He rightly judged that such news
might dull the keen edge of pleasure his London appointment would afford
to his own folk at Hampton. He did not even mention it to Mr.
Puddephatt. For the first time in his life he felt himself something of
a dissembler. In this way his removal to London rather aggravated his
state of mental unrest than modified it. His brightest dream had come
true, but--
The first weeks in London, however, were so full of new sensations and
agreeable distractions, that he had scarcely been a fortnight away from
Laysford when it looked like a year. To walk down Fleet Street and the
Strand each day, or to thread the old byways between the Embankment and
Holborn, with the knowledge that no excursion train was to rush him off
northward at the end of fourteen days, was a pleasure which only the
provincial settling in London could enjoy. How he had longed for years
to tread these pavements as a resident, and not merely as a gaping
visitor. His feet gripped them while he walked, as though he thought at
every stride, "Ye are firm beneath me at last, O Streets of London!"
Fleet Street, he knew in his heart, was outwardly as shabby a
thoroughfare as ever served for the main artery of a great city, but he
also knew that if the buildings were mean and the crowd that surged
along its pavements as common to the eye as any in the frowsiest
provincial city, there was more romance behind many of these shabby
windows which bore the names of journals, famous and obscure, than in
stately Whitehall or in Park Lane. The hum of printing-presses from
dingy basements, the smell of printer's ink from many open doors, had a
charm for him which perversely recalled the scent of new-mown hay in a
Hampton meadow long years before.
At first, he rarely passed a street without noting its name, an odd
building without finding something to engage his interest, a man of
uncommon aspect without wondering who he might be--what paper did he
edit? But soon his daily walk from his lodgings in Woburn Place to the
office of the _Watchman_ opposite the Law Courts was performed with
less attention to the common objects of the route.
A sausage shop hard by his office, sending forth at all hours of the day
a strong odour of frying fat and onions, remained the freshest of his
impressions; he never passed it without thinking of its impertinence in
such a quarter; but one day he discovered that it was not without claim
to literary associations.
A young man with a chin that had required a shave for at least three
days, wearing a shabby black mackintosh suggestive of shabbier things
below, and boots much down at heel, came out of the shop with the aroma
of sausage and onion strong upon him, and the fag-end of a savoury
mouthful in the act of descending his throat. Something in the features
of this dilapidated person struck Henry as oddly familiar, so that he
glanced at him intently, and looked back, still puzzling as to who the
fellow could be, when he found the shabby one looking at him, and
evidently equally exercised concerning his identity. After a moment's
hesitation, Henry walked back to him, and the sausage-eater flushed as
he said:
"Why, Hen--Mr. Charles--can it be you? I knew you were in London, and
had half a mind to call on you, but you--well--"
The reason why was too obvious to call for explanation.
Henry himself was quite as much confused as the speaker. It was a shock
to him to recognise in the person before him none other than one who had
first pointed out to him the road to Journalism--"Trevor Smith, if you
please."
What a change from those Stratford days, when he had talked so jauntily
of fortunes made in Fleet Street, so hopefully of the coming of his own
chance there. The greasy hat was worn with none of the old rakish air,
but served only as a sorry covering for unkempt locks; and if London
streets were paved with gold, the precious metal had worn away the heels
of Trevor's boots as surely as any of the baser sorts.
It was difficult for one so transparently honest as Henry to pretend not
to notice the pitiable condition of his old friend, and there was a
forced cordiality in his tone when he greeted him.
"My dear fellow, I am delighted to meet you again. Odd, isn't it, that
we should meet among London's millions? Come along with me to the Press
Restaurant for a bit of lunch and a chat over old times."
"Thank you very much," said Trevor, "but the fact is I have just had
something to eat--"
"Never mind that; so have I. Let it be coffee and a chat."
Together they crossed the street and sought out a remote corner of the
restaurant, where, despite his protestations, Trevor submitted to adding
two poached eggs on toast to the sumptous repast he had taken at the
sausage-shop.
The story he had to tell was as threadbare as his clothes; with
variations, it might stand for that of fifty per cent, of Fleet Street's
wrecks; the other moiety being explained by the one word, Drink.
Some two years after Henry left Wheelton the Stratford edition of the
_Guardian_ had been discontinued. Despite the brilliancy of the "Notes
and Comments" from Trevor's pungent pen, the number of copies sold
brought no profit to the proprietors, and the journalist who had
demanded weekly "the liberty to know, to think, and to utter freely
above all other liberties," was given the liberty to find another
situation. Every effort to secure a reportership had failed, though he
confessed to having answered upwards of eighty advertisements; and then,
as a last resource, he had found his way to London, which calls for only
those who have fought and won their fight in the provinces, but receives
with every one such a waggon-load of wastrels.
"And now?" asked Henry.
"Writing introductions about different towns for the British
Directories, Limited, at half-a-crown a thousand words. Some weeks it
means as much as fifteen shillings, but the job will soon be finished,
and I see nothing ahead of it."
Trevor was near to weeping point, but perhaps Henry was more affected
than he by the recital of his woes. Gone was every vestige of his old
journalistic chatter, and in the very highway of the profession he
ranked as an alien compared with the position he had held when he and
Henry lodged together at Stratford. Stranger still, in dropping the old
jargon of the newspaper man, he seemed to have lost even the confidence
to ask a loan now that he stood more in need of it, and Henry could
better spare the money.
It was left to Henry to suggest that perhaps the loan of a pound, "as
between two fellow-journalists," would not be amiss. "Most men of
letters," he added kindly, "have at one time or other experienced
reverses of fortune. There is no hurry for repayment."
"I am most grateful; you are indeed a good friend to me," said Trevor,
not without a touch of real emotion; "and if only I can get _Jinks's
Weekly_ to use a three-guinea article on 'A Week in a Dosshouse,' you
shall have the money back soon. They took an article from me--nearly two
years ago--on 'Fortunes made in Journalism.' I got four guineas for it;
but it was the only thing of any length I have managed to place since
coming to town."
The odd couple parted at the restaurant door, and Trevor Smith shuffled
off Strandwards without any profuse thanks, for he was one of those who,
lacking both the capacity and the opportunity to succeed, when overtaken
by misfortune become so shrivelled in character that they display not
even the melancholy pluck necessary to mendicancy. The chances were that
he and Henry would never meet again. The stout ship under full sail had
sighted the derelict for a moment--that was all. Like so many of his
kind, Trevor Smith was fated to sink out of sight in the dark,
mysterious oubliette of London's failures.
The assistant editor of the _Watchman_ returned to his office almost as
sad at heart, if not more so, than the man he had left, whose heart was
numbed and passionless.
The office of his paper was scarcely so elegant as he had once imagined
all London editorial quarters to be. The entrance was a fairly wide slit
between a barber's and a tobacconist's, the stairs as mean as those at
the office of the _Wheelton Guardian_; but the first floor, occupied by
the newspaper, was remarkably well furnished, Mr. Godfrey Pilkington
being a gentleman of some taste, and the proprietor of the _Watchman_
did not stint him in such items of expense. At first Henry had marvelled
that a peer of the realm could have deigned to mount such miserable
stairs or to trust his august person in elbowing between the barber's
and the tobacconist's, but he soon learned that the most unpretentious
accommodation on the highway of journalism may cost as much as marble
halls in a provincial city.
The editor, as Adrian Grant had hinted, was no glutton for work, and an
hour or two each day appeared to satisfy his taste. Thus all the details
of the _Watchman_ were left to Henry, the chief articles being
contributed by friends of Mr. Pilkington. A cashier, a clerk, and an
advertising manager were the only members of the office staff; and as
the paper was distributed by a large wholesale house, no business beyond
the editorial and advertising affairs of the _Watchman_ was conducted at
the office. A very humdrum place, in truth, except on the rare occasions
when the lordly proprietor put in an appearance, or Mr. Pilkington
received some political person with an axe to grind, and an eye on the
_Watchman_, as a possible grinder.
For all that, the _Watchman_ made a brave show every Friday, and its
articles were quoted widely in the provincial Press as representing the
weighty opinion of Tory inner circles; and the more the _Watchman_ was
quoted the higher rose the hopes of Mr. Pilkington that Lord Dingleton
would continue to bridge the monthly chasm which yawned between the
income of the _Watchman_ and the cost of its production, for--let us
blab the horrid truth, as yet unknown to Henry--the paper was merely the
expensive hobby of his lordship.
On returning to his office after his encounter with Trevor Smith, the
young journalist was surprised and delighted to find Adrian Grant seated
in his chair, and smoking the eternal cigarette.
"Thought I would just drop in to see how you were getting along," the
visitor said, rising and shaking hands with his protege. "Very
comfortable quarters here," glancing round Henry's well-furnished room.
"I had just been wondering this very day when I should have the pleasure
of seeing you again." The sincerity of Henry's words was apparent on his
face.
"I have only run up to town for a week or two before leaving for another
spell in Sardinia. I am getting restless again, and there flow the
waters of Nepenthe. But the question is: How are you?"
"Pleased with my work, at least, I must say, and fascinated by London.
But only to-day I have had a peep at its under side, and I fear that
the less one knows of that the better for one's peace."
"'See all, nor be afraid.' Surely you will let Browning advise you if
that decadent Adrian Grant is too pessimistic for your healthy British
taste," said the visitor, with the hint of a smile.