PART II

LILIAN

I

Humphrey Quain came into the office of _The Day_ with the greatest

asset a journalist can possess--enthusiasm. There is no other

profession in the world that calls so continually, day after day, for

enthusiasm. The bank-clerk may have his slack moment in adding up his

figures--indeed the work has become so mechanical to him that he can

even think of other things while making his additions; the actor, even,

has his lines by heart, and can sometimes go automatically through his

part, without the audience noticing he is listless; the barrister may

lose his case; the artist may paint one bad picture--it is forgotten in

the gallery of good ones; but the reporter must be always alert, always

eager, always ready to adapt himself to circumstances and persons,

and fail at the peril of his career. In large things and small things

it is all alike: the man who goes to report a meeting must do it as

eagerly and with as much enthusiasm as the man who journeys to Egypt to

interview the Khedive.

And, as Humphrey soon found, every day and every hour there are forces

conspiring to kill this eagerness and enthusiasm at the root. Before he

had been a week on _The Day_ he began to realize the forces that were

up against him. It seemed that there was a deliberate league on the

part of the world to stifle his ambitions, and to make things go awry

with him. Before he had been a week on _The Day_ he felt that he was

being checked and thwarted by people. He was turned from the doorsteps

by the footmen and servants of those whom he went to see on some quite

trivial matters; or he could never find the man he went forth to seek.

He went from private house to office, from office to club, in search

of a city magnate one day, and failed in his quest, and, after hours

of searching, he came back to _The Day_ empty-handed, and Rivers said

brusquely: "You'll have to try again at dinner-time. He's sure to be

home at seven. We've got to have him to-night." And so he went again

at seven to the man's house, only to find that he was dining out and

would not be back until eleven. Whereupon he waited about patiently,

and, finally, when he did return home, the city magnate declined to

venture any opinion on the subject in question to Humphrey (it was

about the Russian loan), and, after all, he came back, late and tired,

to the office, to find that, as far as Selsey, the chief sub-editor,

was concerned, nobody cared very much about his failure or not.

And, in the morning, his struggles and troubles and the difficulty of

yesterday was quite forgotten, and Rivers never even mentioned the

matter to him. But if _The Sentinel_, or any other paper, had chanced

to find the city magnate in a more relenting mood, and had squeezed an

interview out of him...!

He was given cuttings from other papers, pasted on slips of paper,

and told to inquire into them. They led him nowhere. There would

be, perhaps, an interview with some well-known person of European

interest visiting London, but the printed interview never said where

the well-known person was to be found. And so this meant a weary round

of hotels, and endless telephone calls, until the hours passed, and

Humphrey discovered that the man had left London the night before. Even

though that was no fault of his own, he could not eliminate the sense

of failure from his mind.

And once, Rivers had told him to go and see Cartwright's, the

coal-merchants, in Mark Lane, and get from them some facts about the

rise in the price of coal. And he had been shown into the office, and

Cartwright had talked swiftly, hurling technical facts and figures at

him, as though he had been in the coal business all his life. So that

when the interview was ended, Humphrey reeled out of the office, his

mind and memory a tangle of half-understood facts, and wholly incapable

of writing anything on the matter. Fortunately, when he got back, he

found that other reporters had been seeing coal-merchants, and all that

was wanted was just three lines from each--an expression of opinion

as to whether the high price would last--and Humphrey rescued from

the tangle of talk Cartwright's firm belief that the rise was only

temporary.

Another day he had been sent to interview a Bishop--an authority on

dogma, whose views were to be asked on a startling proposition (from

America) of bringing the Bible up-to-date. The Bishop received Humphrey

coldly in the hall of his house, and Humphrey noticed that the halls

were hung with many texts reflecting Christian sentiments of love and

hope and brotherhood. And the Bishop, unmoved by Humphrey's rather

forlorn appearance, for somehow he quailed before the austere gaitered

personage, curtly told him that he could not discuss the matter.

When Humphrey came back it so happened that he met Neckinger. "Well,

what are you doing to-day, Quain?" asked Neckinger with an indulgent

smile. He was a short, thick-set man, with a pear-shaped face, and

brown eyes that held a quizzical look in them. It was the second time

Humphrey had come into touch with Neckinger, who was the editor of _The

Day_, and rarely ventured from his room when he came to the office.

Humphrey told him where he had been, and with what results.

"Wouldn't he talk?" asked Neckinger.

"No," Humphrey answered.

Neckinger paused with his hand on the door knob. His eyes twinkled, and

his fingers caressed his moustache. "Why didn't you make him talk?"

asked Neckinger with a hint of disapproval in his voice. Then, without

waiting for a reply, he went into his room.

Humphrey felt that he was faced with a new problem in life. How did

one _make_ people talk? It was not enough to hunt your quarry to his

lair--that was the easiest part of the business--you had to compel

him to disgorge words--any words--so be they made coherent sentences.

You had to come back and say that he had spoken, and write down what

he said at your discretion. And if he would not speak, you had, in

some mysterious manner, to force the words from his mouth. That was

what puzzled Humphrey in the beginning. What was the magic key that

the other reporters had to unlock the conversation of those whom they

went to see? They very seldom failed. Humphrey went home, perplexed,

disturbed with this added burden on his shoulders. He saw his life as

one long effort at making unwilling people talk for publication.

And yet, on the whole, this first week of his in Fleet Street was one

of glorious happiness. The romance of the place gripped him at once,

and held him a willing captive. He loved the thrill of pride that came

to him, whenever he passed through the swing doors in the morning,

and the commissionaire, superior person of impregnable dignity,

condescended to nod to him. He loved the reporters' room, with its fire

and the grate, and the half circle of chairs drawn round it, where

there were always two or three of the other men sitting, and talking

wonderful things about the secrets of their work.

In reality, the reporters' room was the most prosaic room in the

whole building. It was a broad, bare room, excessively utilitarian

in appearance. There was nothing superfluous or ornamental in it.

Everything within its four walls was set there for a distinct

purpose. The large high windows were uncurtained so as to admit the

full light of day. And when the full light of day shone, it showed an

incredibly untidy room, with every desk littered with writing-paper,

and newspapers, and even the floor thick with a slipshod carpet of

printed matter. The desks were placed against the walls and round the

room. Humphrey had no desk of his own. He usually came in and sat at

whichever desk was empty, and more often than not the rightful owner of

the desk would arrive, and Humphrey would mumble apologies, gather up

his papers, and depart to the next desk. In this way he sometimes made

a whole tour of the room, shifting from desk to desk.

There were pegs near the door, and from one of them a disreputable

umbrella dangled by its crook handle. It was pale-brown with dust, and

its ribs were bent and broken, and rents showed in the covering--as an

umbrella its use had long since gone, yet it still hung there. Nobody

knew to whom it belonged. Nobody threw it away--it was a respected

survival of some ancient day. It remained for ever, an umbrella that

had once done good and faithful work, now useless and dusty, with its

gaping holes and twisted framework--perhaps, as a symbol.

A telephone, a bell that rang in the commissionaire's box and told him

the reporter needed a messenger-boy, and a pot of paste completed the

furniture of the reporters' room. They had all they needed, and if

they wished for anything they could ring for it--that was the attitude

of the managerial side who were responsible for office luxuries. The

manager, by the way, had a room that was, by comparison, a temple of

luxury, from its soft-shaded electric lights and green wall-paper

(the reporters' walls were distempered) to its wondrous carpet, and

mahogany desk. Nobody seemed to care very much for the reporters,

Humphrey found, except when one of them--or all of them--saved the

paper from being beaten by its rivals, or caused the paper to beat

its rivals. But in the ordinary course of events, the manager ignored

the reporters; the sub-editors, in their hearts, regarded them as

loafers and pitied their grammar and inaccuracy for official titles

and initials of leading men; Neckinger never bothered much about them

unless there was trouble in the air, while those distant people, the

leader-writers, sometimes looked at them curiously, as one regards

strange types. And yet, the reporters were the friendliest and most

human of all those in the office. They came daily into contact with

life in all its forms, and it knocked the rough edges off them. They

were generous, large-hearted men, whose loyalty to their paper had no

limits. They lived together, herded in their big bare room, chafing

always against their slavery, and yet loving their bondage, unmoved at

the strange phases of life that passed through their hands; surveying,

as spectators regard a stage-play, the murders, the humours, the

achievements, the tragedies, and the sorrow and laughter of nations.

In those days the interior of the grey building was an unexplored

mystery for Humphrey. He passed along the corridors by half-opened

doors which gave a tantalizing glimpse into the rooms beyond where

men sat writing. There were the sporting rooms, where the sporting

editor and his staff worked at things quite apart from the reporters.

Nothing seemed to matter to them: the greatest upheavals left their

room undisturbed; football, cricket, racing, coursing and the giving

of tips were their main interests, and though a king died or war was

declared, they still held their own page, the full seven columns of it,

so that they could chronicle the sport and the pleasure. The sporting

men and the reporters seldom mingled in the office; sometimes Lake, the

sporting editor, nodded to those he knew coming up the stairs. He was

a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a heavy face, and the appearance of

a clubman and a man of the world.

Close to the sporting room was a strange room lit with an

extraordinarily luminous pale blue glare. Humphrey satisfying his

curiosity prowled about the building one evening, and ventured to

the door. The men who were there did not question his presence. They

just looked at him and went on with their work. One of them, in his

shirt-sleeves and a black apron, was holding a black square of glass

to the light, from which something shining was dripping. A pungent

smell of iodoform filled Humphrey's nostrils. He knew the smell; it was

intimately associated with the recollections of his youth, when he had

dabbled in photography with a low-priced camera, using the cistern-room

at the top of the house as a dark-room. And he saw that another man

was manipulating an enormous camera, that moved along a grooved base.

This, he knew, was an enlarging apparatus, and he realized that here

they were making the blocks for _The Day_--transferring a drawing or a

photograph to copper or zinc plates.

There was something real and vital about this office where each day was

active with a different activity from the day before; where each room

was a mirror of life itself.

Next door to the room where the blue light vibrated and flared

intensely, he found a smaller room, where two men sat, also in their

shirt-sleeves, tap-tapping at telegraph transmitters. A cigarette

dangled loosely from the lip of each man, and neither of them glanced

at the work of his fingers. They looked always at the printed proof, or

the written copy held in a clip before them. This was the provincial

wire room. They were tapping a selection of the news, letter by letter,

to Birmingham, where _The Day_ had an office of its own. Humphrey

noticed with a queer thrill that one of the men was sending through

something that he himself had written.

Downstairs, in a long room, longer than the reporters' room, and just

as utilitarian, the sub-editors sat at two broad tables forming the

letter T. Mr Selsey, the chief sub-editor, sat in the very centre of

the top of the T, surrounded by baskets, and proofs, and telephones,

and, at about seven o'clock every evening, his dinner. He was a

gentle-mannered man, whose face told the time as clearly as a clock.

From six to eight it was cheerful; when he began to frown it was nine

o'clock; when he grew restless and spoke brusquely it was eleven;

and when his hair was dishevelled and his eyes became anxious it was

eleven-thirty, and the struggle of pruning down and rejecting the

masses of copy that passed through his hands was at its climax. At one

o'clock he was normal again, and became gentle over a cup of cocoa.

Humphrey was never certain whether Mr Selsey approved of him or not.

He had to go through the ordeal every evening of bringing that which

he had written to him, and to stand by while it was read. It reminded

him of his school-days, when he used to bring his exercise-book up to

the schoolmaster. Selsey seldom made any comment--he read it, marked

it with a capital letter indicating whether its fate would be three

lines, a paragraph, or its full length, and tossed it into a basket,

whence it would be rescued by one of the sub-editors, who saw that

the paragraphs, the punctuation and the sense of it were right, cut

out whole sentences if it were necessary to compress it, and added a

heading to it. Then, it was taken back to Selsey, who glanced at it

quickly, and threw it into another basket, whence it was removed by a

boy and shot through a pneumatic tube to the composing-room.

The sub-editors' room was the heart of the organism of _The Day_

between the hours of six in the evening and one the next morning. It

throbbed with persistent business. The tape machines clicked out the

news of the world in long strips, and boys stood by them, cutting up

the slips into convenient sizes, and pasting them on paper.

The telephone bells rang, and every night at nine-thirty, Westgate,

the leather-lunged sub-editor, disappeared into a telephone-box with

a glass door. Humphrey saw him one night when he happened to be in

the room. He looked like a man about to be electrocuted, with a band

over the top of his skull, ending in two receivers that fitted closely

over his ears. His hands were free so that he could write, and through

the glass Humphrey watched his mouth working violently until his face

was wet with perspiration. He was shouting through a mouthpiece, and

his words were carried under the sea to Paris, though no one in the

sub-editors' room could hear them, since the telephone-box was padded

and noise-proof.

And Humphrey could see his pencil moving swiftly over the paper,

with an occasional pause, as his mouth opened widely to articulate a

question, and again he felt that delightful and mighty sensation of

being in touch with the bones of life, as he realized that somewhere,

far away in Paris, the correspondent of _The Day_, invisible but

audible, was hailing the sub-editors' room across space and time.

He saw no longer the strained, taut face of Westgate, his unkempt

moustache bobbing up and down with the movement of his upper lip, the

big vein down his forehead bulging like a thick piece of string with

his perspiring exertions. He saw a miracle, and it filled his heart

with a strange exultation. He wanted to say to Selsey, "Isn't that

splendid!"

Six other men sat at the long table that ran at right angles to the

top table, and Selsey was flanked by Westgate, who dealt with Paris,

and Tothill, who did the police-court news,--the stub of a cigarette

stuck on his lower lip as though it were some strange growth. These

men, in the first few days of Humphrey's life in the office of _The

Day_, were incomprehensible people to him. He could not understand

why they should elect, out of all the work in the world, to sit down

at a table from six until one; to leave their homes--he assumed that

they were comfortable--their firesides and their wives. They did not

meet life as the reporters did; they had none of the glamour and the

adventure of it, the work seemed to him to be unutterably stale and

destructive. One or two of them wore green shades over their eyes to

protect them from the glare of white paper under electric light. And

the green shades gave their faces an appearance of pallor. They looked

at him curiously whenever he came into the room: he divined at once,

rightly or wrongly, that their interests clashed with his. They were

one of their forces which he knew he would have to fight.

The remembrance of Tommy Pride's words echoed in his ears as he stood

by Selsey's table.

Yet this room held him spell-bound as none other did. It was the

main artery through which the life-blood of _The Day_ flowed. He saw

the boys ripping open the russet-coloured envelopes that disgorged

telegrams from islands and continents afar off; he saw them sorting

out stacks of tissue paper covered with writing, "flimsy"--manifolded

copy--from all the people who lived by recording the happenings of the

moment--men like Beaver, who were lost if people did not do things--the

stories of people who brought law-suits, who were born, married,

divorced; who went bankrupt; who died; who left wills; stories of

actors who played parts; of books that were written; of men who made

speeches; of banquets; of funerals--the little, grubby boys were

handling the epitome of existence, and this great volume of throbbing

life was merely paper with words scrawled over it to them.... It was

only in after years that Humphrey himself perceived the significance

and the meaning of the emotions which swelled within him during those

early days. At the time, as he glanced left and right, down the long

table, where the sub-editors bent their heads to their work, and he saw

this man dealing with the city news, making out lists of the prices

of stocks and shares, and that man handling the doings of Parliament,

something moved him inwardly to smile with a great, unbounded pride. He

was like a recruit who has been blooded. "I, too, am part of this," he

thought. "And this is part of me."

* * * * *

Yet another glimpse he had into the mysteries of the grey building, and

then he marvelled, not that the small things he wrote were cut down,

but that they ever got into print at all.

It was one night when he had been sent out on a late inquiry. A

"runner"--one of those tattered men, who run panting into newspaper

offices at night with news of accidents or fires--had brought in some

story of an omnibus wreck in Whitehall. Humphrey was given a crumpled

piece of paper, with wretchedly scrawled details on it, and told to

go forth and investigate. Had he not been so new to the game, he

would have known that it was wise to telephone to Charing Cross or

Westminster hospitals, for the deductive mind of a reporter used to

such things would have told him that where there is an omnibus wreck,

there must be injury to life and limb, and the nearest hospitals

would be able to verify the bald fact of an accident. But there was

nobody who had sufficient leisure or inclination to teach Humphrey his

business, and, perhaps it was all the better for him that he should

buy his lessons with experience. For he found that "runners'" tales,

though they must be investigated, seldom pay for the investigation.

The "runner" exaggerates manfully for the sake of his half-crown.

Thus, when he arrived at Whitehall, he found, by the simple expedient

of asking the policeman on point duty, that there had been an

accident--most decidedly there had been an accident; one wheel had come

off an omnibus. When? "Oh, about three hours ago, but nobody was hurt

as I know on. You can go back and tell 'em there's nothing in it for

the noosepaper."

Humphrey had never said that he was a reporter: how did the policeman

know? He was a good-natured, red-faced man, and his attitude towards

Humphrey was one of easy-going familiarity and gentle tolerance. He

spoke kindly as equal to equal; it might almost be said that, from his

great height, he bent down, as it were, to meet Humphrey, with the

air of a patron conferring benefits. He was not like the Easterham

policemen who touched their hats to Humphrey, and called him "sir,"

because they knew whenever anything happened, the _Gazette_ would refer

to the plucky action of P.C. Coles, who was on point duty at the time.

"Nobody hurt at all!" Humphrey repeated, looking vaguely round in the

darkness, as though he expected to see the wooden streets of Whitehall

littered with bleeding corpses to give the constable the lie.

"You go 'ome," said the policeman, kindly. "I should be the first to

know of anything like that if it was serious. I'd have to put in my

report. I ain't got no mention of no one injured seriously."

He said it with an air of finality, as though he were taking upon

himself the credit of having saved life and limb by not using his

notebook. And with that, he eased the chin-strap of his helmet with

his forefinger, nodded smilingly, repeated, "You go 'ome," and padded

riverwards in his rubber-soled boots.

When Humphrey got back to the office and into the sub-editors' room to

tell his news, he found that their work was slackening. Two or three of

them were hard at it, but the rest were having their supper. A tall,

spidery-looking man, with neatly parted fair hair and a singularly high

forehead, was tossing for pennies with Westgate--and winning. It was

midnight. One of the sub-editors said to Humphrey:

"You'd better tell Selsey; he's in the composing-room." Humphrey

hesitated.

"It's across the corridor," his informant added.

He went across the corridor, and into a new world. The room was alive

with noise; row upon row the aproned linotype operators sat before the

key-boards translating the written words of the "copy" before them into

leaden letters. Their machines were almost human. They touched the

keys, as if they were typewriting, and little brass letters slipped

down into a line, and then mechanically an iron hand gripped the

line, plunged it into a box of molten lead, and lifted it out again

with a solid line of lead cast from the mould, while the little brass

letters were hoisted upwards and distributed automatically into their

places, and all the time the same business was being repeated again

and again. The lines of type were set up in columns, seven of them to

a page, and locked in an iron frame, and then they were taken to an

inner room, where men pressed papier mâché over the pages of type, so

that every letter was moulded clearly on this substance. Then this

"flong" was placed in a curved receptacle, and boiling lead was poured

upon it, as on a mould, so that one had the page curved to fit the

cylinder of the printing machine. The curved sheet went through various

phases of trimming and making ready, until it was finally taken to the

basement.... Very many brains were working together that the words

written by Humphrey should be repeated hundreds and thousands of times.

All these men were part of the mighty scheme. They had their homes and

their separate lives outside the big building, but here they were all

merged into one disciplined body, for so many hours at night, carrying

on the work which the men on the other side did during the day.

In one corner of the room Selsey was busy with Hargreave, the assistant

night editor, and as Humphrey went up he saw that they were still

cutting out things from printed proofs, and altering headings. And on

an iron-topped table great squares of type rested--the forms just as

he had seen them in the _Easterham Gazette_ office--only they were

bigger, and the "furniture"--the odd wedge-shaped pieces of wood which

they used in Easterham to lock the type firmly in between the frames,

was abandoned for a simpler contrivance in iron. And there were Selsey

and Hargreave peering at the first pages of _The Day_ in solid type,

reading it from right to left, as one reads Hebrew, and suddenly

Hargreave would say: "Well we'd better take out the last ten lines of

that, and shift this half-way down the column, and put this Reuter

message at the top with a splash heading," or else, putting a finger on

a square of type, "take that out altogether, that'll give us room." And

he would glance up at the clock, with the anxiety of a man who knows

there are trains to catch.

No question of writing here.... No time for sentiment.... No time to

think, "Poor devil, those ten lines cost, perhaps, hours of work,"

or, "Those ten lines were thought by their writer to be literature."

Literature be hanged! It was only cold type, leaden letters squeezed

into square frames--leaden letters that will be melted down on the

morrow--type, and the whole paper to be printed, and trains for the

delivery carts to catch, if people would have papers before breakfast.

And the aproned men brought other squares of type, and printed rough

impressions of them, so that Humphrey caught a glimpse of one of the

pages at shortly after midnight of a paper that would be new to people

at eight o'clock the next morning. He felt the pride of a privileged

person.

Selsey caught sight of him. "Hullo, Quain ... what are you doing here?"

"Bus accident--" began Humphrey.

Hargreave pounced upon him. "Any good? Is it worth a contents bill?" he

asked, excitedly.

"There hasn't been any accident worth speaking of. No one hurt, I mean."

"All right. Let it go," said Selsey, calmly. Hargreave went away to

haggle with the foreman over something. Nobody was relieved to hear

that the accident had not been serious.

Humphrey lingered a little longer: he saw rooms leading out of the

composing-room, where there was a noise of hammering on metal, and the

smell of molten lead, ... and men running to and fro in aprons, taking

surreptitious pinches of snuff, banging with mallets, carrying squares

of type, proofs, battered tins of tea, ... running to and fro, terribly

serious and earnest, just as scene-shifters in the theatre rush and

bustle and carry things that the audience never sees, when the curtain

hides the stage.

"Better get home," said Selsey, noticing him again.

Humphrey went downstairs. The reporters' room was empty; the fire was

low in the grate. He went downstairs, and as he reached the bottom

step, the grey building shivered and trembled as if in agony, and

there came up from the very roots of its being a deep roar, at first

irregular, and menacing, but gradually settling down to a steady,

rhythmical beat, like the throbbing of thousands of human hearts.

II

The man whom Humphrey feared most, in those early days, was Rivers, the

news-editor. His personality was a riddle. You were never certain when

you were summoned to his room in the morning, whether good or ill would

result from it. In his hands lay the ordering of your day. You had no

more control over your liberty from the time you came into Rivers'

room than a prisoner serving his sentence,--no longer a man with a

soul, but a reporter. You could be raised into the highest heaven or

dropped down to the deepest hell by the wish of Rivers. He could bid

you go forth--and you would have to tramp wretchedly the streets of the

most unlovely spots in outer London in an interminable search for some

elusive news: or perhaps you would be given five pounds for expenses

and told to catch the next train for a far county, and spend the day

among the hedgerows of the country-side. He had power absolute, like

the taskmasters of old.

He sat in his room, with the map of England on the wall with its red

flags marking the towns where _The Day_ had correspondents, surrounded

by telephones and cuttings from papers. He was in the office all day

and night. At least that was how it appeared to Humphrey, who met him

often and at all times on the stairs. When he was not, by any chance,

there, his place was taken by O'Brien, an excitable Irishman, whose

tie worked itself gradually up his collar, marking the time when his

excitement was at fever-heat like a barometer.

Rivers had a home, of course, and a wife and a family. He was

domesticated somewhere out in Herne Hill, from the hours of eight

until ten-thirty in the morning; and except once a week no more was

seen of him at home. O'Brien generally took the desk on Sundays. But

for the rest of his life Rivers lived and breathed with _The Day_

more than any one else. From the time the door closed on him after

breakfast, to the time when it closed on him late at night, when he

went home, worn-out and tired, he worked for _The Day_. He was bought

as surely as any slave was bought in the days of bondage. And his price

was a magnificent one of four figures.

He expected his men to do as he did, in the service of the paper. For

his goodwill, nothing sufficed but the complete subservience of all

other interests to the work of _The Day_. Not until you did that, were

you worthy to be on the paper and serve him.... And many hearts were

broken in that room, with its hopeless gospel of materialism, where

ideals were withered and nothing spiritual could survive.

Rivers was one of the young men who had won himself to power by the

brute force of his intellect. He knew his own business to the tips of

his fingers, and, beyond that, nothing mattered. Art and literature and

the finer qualities of life could not enter into the practical range of

his vision. They were not news. The great halfpenny public cared for

nothing but news--a murder mystery, for choice; and the only chance

art or literature had of awaking his interest was for the artist to

commit suicide in extraordinary circumstances, or for the novelist to

murder his publisher. ("By George!" I can hear Rivers saying, "here's a

ripping story.... Here's an author murdered his publisher ... 'm ... 'm

... I suppose it's justifiable homicide.")

But on news--red-hot news--he was splendid. He might be sitting in

his chair, joking idly with anybody who happened to be in the room,

and suddenly the boy would bring in a slip from the tape machine: a

submarine wreck! Immediately, the listless, joking man would become

swiftly serious and grim. He would decide instantly on the choice of

reporters--two should be sent to the scene. "Boy, bring the A.B.C.

No train. Damn it, why didn't that kid bring the news in at once. He

dawdled five minutes. We could have caught the 3.42. Well, look up the

trains to Southampton. Four o'clock. O'Brien, telephone up Southampton

and tell them to have a car to take _The Day_ reporters on. Boy, ask

Mr Wratten and Mr Pride to come up. O'Brien, send a wire to the local

chaps--tell 'em to weigh in all they can. Notify the post-office five

thousand words from Portsmouth. Too late for photographs to-night--ring

through to the artists, we'll have a diagram and a map. Off Southsea,

eh? Shove in a picture of Southsea...." And in an hour it would all

be over, and Rivers, a new man with news stirring in the world, would

playfully punch O'Brien in the chest, and gather about him a reporter

or two for company, and bestow wonderful largesse in the shape of

steaks and champagne. That was the human thing about Rivers. He was

master absolute, and yet there was no sharp dividing line between him

and the men under him. The discipline was there, but it was never

obtruded. They drank, and joked, and scored off each other, and Rivers,

when things were slack, would tell them some of his early adventures,

but whenever it came to the test, his authority in his sphere was

supreme. He knew how to get the best work out of his men; and, I think,

sometimes, he was sorry for the men who had not, and never would get, a

salary of four figures.

Humphrey could not understand him. At times he would be brutally cruel,

and morose, scarcely speaking a word to anybody except Wratten, who was

generally in his good books; at other times he would come to the office

as light-hearted as a child, and urge them all into good-humour, and

make them feel that there was no life in the world equal to theirs.

Since that day when Humphrey had first met him in Ferrol's room, and he

had laughed and said, "You're not a genius, are you?" Rivers had not

taken any particular notice of him. When he came into Rivers' room,

halting and nervous, he envied the easy freedom of the other reporters

who chanced to be there. Wratten sitting on a table, dangling his legs,

and Tommy Pride, with his hat on the back of his head, and a pipe in

his mouth, while a third man might be looking over the diary of the

day's events.

"Hullo, Quain...."

"Good-morning, Mr Rivers."

"O'Brien, what have you got for Quain. Eh? Nothing yet. Go downstairs

and wait."

Or else: "Nothing doing this morning. You'd better do this lecture at

seven o'clock. Give him the ticket, O'Brien."

And, as Humphrey left the room, he heard Wratten say casually, "I'll

do that Guildhall luncheon to-day, Rivers, eh?" And Rivers replied,

"Right-O. We shall want a column."

Splendid Wratten, he thought! How long would it be before he acquired

such ease, such sure familiarity--how long before he should prove

himself worthy to dangle his legs freely in the presence of Rivers.

Within a few days something happened that made Humphrey the celebrity

of a day in the reporters' room. It was a fluke, a happy chance, as

most of the good things in life are. A man had killed himself in a

London street under most peculiar circumstances. He had dressed himself

in woman's clothes, and only, after death, when they took him to the

hospital, did they find that the dead body was that of a man. He was

employed in a solicitor's office near Charing Cross Road. His name was

Bellowes, and he was married, and lived at Surbiton. These facts were

published briefly in the afternoon papers. Rivers, scenting a mystery,

threw his interest into the story. There is nothing like a mystery for

selling the paper. He sent for Willoughby.

Humphrey had found Willoughby one of the most astonishing individuals

of the reporters' room. He was a tall, slim man, with a hollow-cheeked

face and a forehead that was always frowning. His hair fell in disorder

almost over his eyebrows, and whenever he wrote he pulled his hair

about with his left hand, and mumbled the sentences as he wrote them.

His speciality was crime: he knew more of the dark underside of human

nature than any one Humphrey had met. He knew the intimate byways of

crime, and its motives; every detective in the Criminal Investigation

Department was his friend, and though by the rigid law of Scotland Yard

they were forbidden to give information, he could chat with them, make

his own deductions as well as any detective, and sometimes accompany

them when an arrest was expected. He drew his information from unknown

sources, and he was always bringing the exclusive news of some crime or

other to _The Day_.

He was a bundle of nerves, for he lived always in a world of

expectancy. At any moment, any hour, day and night, something would

be brought to light. Murder and sudden death and mystery formed the

horizon of his thoughts.

Humphrey had found a friend in Willoughby. In very contrast to the

work in which he was engaged, he kept the room alive with merriment.

He could relate stories as well as he could write them, and he spoke

always with the set phrases of old-time journalism that had a ludicrous

effect on his listeners. His character was a strange mixture of

shrewdness, worldly-wisdom, and ingenuousness, and this was reflected

in the books he carried always with him. In one pocket there would

be an untranslatable French novel, and, in the other, by way of

counterblast, a Meredith or a Stevenson. He and Humphrey had often

talked about books, and Willoughby showed the temperament of a cultured

scholar and a philosopher when he discussed literature.

Willoughby went up to Rivers' room.

"Here you are, my son," said Rivers, tossing him over the cuttings on

the affair of the strange suicide. "Get down to Surbiton and see if you

can nose out anything. I'll get some one else to look after the London

end."

The some one else chanced to be Humphrey, for there was nobody but him

left in the reporters' room. Thus it came about that, a few minutes

after Willoughby had set out for Surbiton, Humphrey came out on Fleet

Street with instructions to look after the "London end" of the tragedy.

Rivers' parting words were ringing in his ears. They had a sinister

meaning in them. "... And don't you fall down, young man," he had said,

using the vivid journalistic metaphor for failure.

The busy people of the street surged about him, as he stood still for a

moment trying to think where he should begin on the London end. He felt

extraordinarily inexperienced and helpless.... He thought how Wratten

would have known at once where to go, or how easily Tommy Pride, with

his years of training, could do the job. He did not dare ask Rivers to

teach him his business--he had enough common sense to know that, at any

cost, his ignorance must be hidden under a mask of wisdom.

The reporter thrust suddenly face to face with a mystery that must be

unravelled in a few hours is a fit subject for tragedy. He is a social

outlaw. He has not the authority of the detective, and none of the

secret information of a department at his hand. He is a trespasser in

private places, a Peeping Tom, with his eye to a chink in the shuttered

lives of others. His inner self wrenches both ways; he loathes and

loves his duty. The human man in him says, "This is a shocking

tragedy!" The journalist subconsciously murmurs, "This will be a column

at least." Tears, and broken hearts, and the dismal tragedy of it all

pass like a picture before him, and leave him unmoved.

The public stones him for obeying their desires. He would gladly give

up all this sorry business ... and perhaps his salvation lies in his

own hand if he becomes sufficiently strong and bold to cry "Enough!"

And this is the tragedy of it--he is neither strong nor bold; and so we

may appreciate the picture of Humphrey Quain faced for the first time

with the crisis that comes into every journalist's life, when his work

revolts his finer senses.

He went blindly up the street, and newsboys ran towards him with

raucous shouts, offering the latest news of the suicide. He bought a

copy, and read through the story. It occurred to him that the best

thing he could do was to go to the offices near Charing Cross Road,

where the dead man had worked.

He took an omnibus. It was five o'clock in the evening, and most of

the passengers were City men going home. Lucky people--their work was

finished, and his was not yet begun.

When he came to the building he wanted, he paused outside. It was a

ghastly business. What on earth should he say? What right had he to go

and ask questions--there would be an inquest. Surely the public could

wait till then for the sordid story. It was ghoulish.

He went into the office and asked the young man at the counter whether

Mr Parfitt (the name of the partner) was in. The young man must have

guessed his business in a moment. Humphrey felt as if he had a placard

hanging round his neck, "I am a newspaper man." "No," snapped the young

man, curtly, "he's out."

"When will he be back?" asked Humphrey.

"I don't know," the young man answered, obstinately. "Who are you

from?" That was a form of insult reserved for special occasions: it

implied, you see, that the caller was obviously not of such appearance

as to suggest that he was anything but a paid servant.

Humphrey said: "I wanted to talk about this sad tragedy of--"

The young man looked him up and down, and said, "We've nothing to say."

"But--" began Humphrey.

"We've nothing to say." The young man's lips closed tightly together

with a grimace of absolute finality. Humphrey hesitated: he knew that

the whole mystery lay within the knowledge of this spiteful person, if

only he could be overcome.

"Look here," said the young man, threateningly. "Why don't you damn

reporters mind your own business. You're the seventh we've 'ad up 'ere.

We've nothing to say. See?" His voice rose to a shriller key. He was

a very unpleasant young man, but fortunately he dropped his "h's,"

which modified, in some strange way, in Humphrey's mind the effect

of his onslaught. The young man who had at first seemed somebody of

importance, faded away now merely to an underbred nonentity. Humphrey

laughed at him.

"You might keep your h's if you can't keep your temper," he said.

Then he left the office, feeling sorry for himself. It was nearly six

o'clock, and he was no further. A hall-porter sat reading a paper

in front of the fireplace. Humphrey tried diplomacy. He remarked on

the tragedy: the hall-porter agreed it was very tragic. There had

been seven other reporters before him (marvellous how policemen and

hall-porters seemed to know him at once). Humphrey felt in his pocket

for half-a-crown and slipped it into the porter's hand. The porter

thanked him with genuine gratitude.

"Well," said Humphrey, "what sort of a chap was this Mr Bellowes?"

"Can't say as how I ever saw him," said the porter; "this is my first

day here."

"O lord!" groaned Humphrey.

He was in the street again, pondering what he should do. And suddenly

that intuitive reasoning power of his began to work. A man who worked

in the neighbourhood would conceivably be known to the shopkeepers

round about. He visited the shops adjoining the building where the dead

man worked, but none of them yielded any information, not even the

pawnbrokers. The men whom he asked seemed quite willing to help, but

they knew nothing. Finally, he went into the Green Lion public-house

which stands at the corner by a court.

Hitherto public-houses had not interested him very much: he went into

them rarely, because in Easterham, where every one's doings were noted,

it was considered the first step downwards to be seen going into a

public-house. Thus, he had grown up without acquiring the habit of

promiscuous drinking.

There were a good many people in the bar, and the briskness of business

was marked by the frequent pinging noise of the bell in the patent cash

till, as a particularly plain-looking young woman pulled the drawer

open to drop money in. Humphrey asked for bottled beer. "Cannock's?"

the barmaid asked. "Please." She gave him the drink. He said "Thank

you." She said "Thank you." She gave him the change, and said "Thank

you" again. Whereupon, in accordance with our polite custom, he

murmured a final "'Kyou." Then she went away with an airy greeting to

some fresh customer.

Presently she came back to where Humphrey was standing. He plunged

boldly.

"Sad business this of Mr Bellowes?" he ventured, taking a gulp at his

beer. She raised her eyebrows in inquiry.

"Haven't you read about--" he held a crumpled evening paper in his

hand. "The tragedy, I mean."

"Oh yes," she said. "Very sad, isn't it?"

A man came between them. "'Ullo, Polly, lovely weather, don't it?" he

said, cheerfully, counting out six coppers, and making them into a neat

pile on the table. "Same as usual."

"Now then, Mister Smart!" said Polly, facetiously, bringing him a glass

of whisky. "All the soda."

"Up to the pretty, please," he said, adding "Whoa-er" as the soda-water

bubbled to the level of the fluted decorations round the glass. Small

talk followed, frequently interrupted by fresh arrivals. A quarter

of an hour passed. The cheerful man had one more drink, and finally

departed, with Polly admonishing him to "Be good," to which he replied,

"I always am." Humphrey ordered another Cannock.

"Did he often come here?"

"Who?" asked Polly. "Mr Jobling--the man who's gone out?"

"No. I mean Mr Bellowes."

"I'm sure I don't know," she said a little distantly. "Those gentlemen

over there"--nodding to a corner of the bar where two men stood in the

shadows--"can tell you all about him. They were telling me something

about him just before you came in. Fourpence, please."

Humphrey took with him his glass of beer, and went to the two men. They

were both drinking whisky, and they seemed to be in a good humour.

They turned at Humphrey's wavering "Excuse me...."

"Eh?" said one of the men.

"Excuse me..." Humphrey repeated. "I'm told you knew Mr Bellowes."

"Well," said the other man, a little truculently. "What if we did?"

It seemed to Humphrey that the most absolute frankness was desirable

here.

"Look here," he said, "I wish you'd help me by telling me something

about him. Here's my card.... I'm on _The Day_."

The younger of the two men smiled, and winked. "You've got a nerve," he

said. "Why, you couldn't print it if we told you."

"Couldn't I? Well, never mind. Let's have a drink on it anyway."

Humphrey began his third Cannock, and the others drank whisky. One of

them, in drinking, spilt a good deal of the liquor over his coat lapel,

and did not bother to wipe it off: he was slightly drunk.

"It's bringing a bad reputation on the firm," said the elder man. "Name

in all the papers."

Humphrey was seized with an idea. He knew now that the whole secret

of the mystery was within his grasp. One of the men, at least, was

from the solicitor's office. The instinct of the journalist made him

courageous: he would never leave the bar until he got the story.

"I'll tell you what," he said, "I'll promise to keep the name of the

firm out of _The Day_; I'll just refer to it as a firm of solicitors!"

"That's not a bad notion," said the younger man. He drew the elder

man aside and they talked quietly for a few minutes. Then more drinks

were ordered. Humphrey tackled his fourth Cannock. His head was just

beginning to ache.

A tantalizing half-hour passed. The younger man seemed more friendly

to Humphrey--he had some friends in Fleet Street; did Humphrey know

them, and so on. The elder man was growing more drunk. He swayed a

little now. Humphrey's ears buzzed, and his vision was not so acute.

The outlines of people were blurred and indistinct. "Good lord," he

murmured to himself, "I'm getting drunk too." He was pleasantly happy,

and smiled into his sixth glass of beer. He confided to the elder man

that he admired him for his constancy to the dead man, and they began

to talk over the bad business as friends. The elder man even called him

"Ol' chap." They really were very affectionate.

"But WHY did he do it?" said Humphrey; "that's what beats me."

"Oh, well, you see he was in love with this girl ..."

"Which girl?"

"Why, Miss Sycamore ... you know the little girl that sings, 'Come

Round and See Me in the Evening,' in the _Pompadour Girl_."

"No. Was he?"

"Was he not," said the elder man, with a hiccough. "Why, he used to

be talking to me all day about her.... And the letters. My word, you

should see the letters ... he used to show them to me before he sent

them off. Full of high thinking and all that."

And gradually the whole story came out, in scattered pieces, that

Humphrey saw he could put together into a real-life drama. Never once

did he think of the dead man, or the dead man's wife in Surbiton

(Willoughby was probably doing his best there). He only saw the secret

drama unfolding itself like a novelist's plot. The meetings, the

letters, the double life of Bellowes, a respectable churchwarden in

Surbiton; a libertine in London--and then she threw him over; declined

to see him when he called at the stage door; he had dressed himself as

a woman, hoping to pass the stage-door keeper. Perhaps if he had got as

far as the dressing-room, maddened by the breakage of his love, and the

waste of his intrigue, there might have been a double tragedy. And so

to the final grotesque death in the street.

It was eight o'clock when Humphrey had the whole story in his mind, and

by that time, though he knew he had drunk far too much, he was not so

drunk as the other two men.

"There you are, old boy," said the elder man, affectionately. "You can

print it all, and keep my name and the name of the firm out of the

papers."

"So long," said the younger man, as they parted at the door of the bar.

"You won't have another."

"I'd better get back now," Humphrey replied. "Thanks awfully. You've

done me a good turn."

He walked back to the office; the late evening papers still bore on

their posters the word "Mystery"--but he alone of all the people

hurrying to and fro knew the key of the mystery. He had set forth a

few hours ago--it seemed years--ignorant of everything, and, behold,

he had put a finger into the tragedy of three lives. All that feeling

of revolt and hatred of his business passed away from him, and left in

its place nothing but a great joy that he had succeeded, where he never

dreamt success was possible. After this he knew he must be a journalist

for ever, a licensed meddler in the affairs of other people.

And so, with his head throbbing, and his legs a little unsteady, he

came back to the office of _The Day_. It was nine o'clock; Rivers had

left the office for the night, and O'Brien was out at dinner. He went

to Mr Selsey, and told him briefly all he knew.

"Where did you get it from?" Selsey asked.

"From some friends of his; I promised I wouldn't mention the name of

the firm of solicitors he worked in."

"What about Miss Sycamore?"

"Miss Sycamore?" echoed Humphrey, blankly.

"Yes. Haven't you got her? We must know what she says. It mayn't be

true."

Humphrey's head swam. He was appalled at the idea of having to go out

again, and face the woman in the sordid case. Selsey looked at the

clock. "I'll send somebody else up to see her--she's at the Hilarity

Theatre, isn't she? You'd better get on with the main story. Write all

you can."

He went to the reporters' room; nobody was there except Wratten, just

finishing his work. Humphrey sat down at a desk, and began to write.

His brain was whirling with the facts he had learnt; they tumbled over

one another, until he did not know how to tell them all. He started

to write, and he found that he could not even begin the story. He

tore up sheet after sheet in despair. The clock went past the quarter

and Humphrey was still staring helplessly at the blank paper. Wratten

finished his work and dashed out with his copy to the sub-editor's room.

"I'm drunk," he said to himself. "That's what's the matter."

And later: "What a fool I was to drink so much."

And then, as if in excuse: "But I shouldn't have got the story if I

hadn't drunk with them."

A boy came to him. "Mr Selsey says have you got the first sheets of

your story."

"Tell him he'll have them in a few minutes," Humphrey said.

And when Wratten came into the room he found Humphrey with his head on

his outstretched arms, and his shoulders shaken with his sobbing.

"Hullo! What's up, old man?" asked Wratten, bending over him. "Not

well?"

Humphrey lifted a red-eyed face to Wratten. "I'm drunk," he said. "My

head's awful."

"Bosh!" Wratten said cheerfully, "you're sober enough. Selsey's

delighted you've got your story. I suppose it was a hard story to get."

Humphrey groaned. "I can't write it.... I can't get even the beginning

of it."

"That happens to all of us. I have to begin my story half a dozen times

before I get the right one. Look here, let me help you. Tell me as much

as you can." He touched the bell, and a boy appeared. "Go and get a cup

of black coffee--a large cup, Napoleon," he said jovially to the boy,

giving him a sixpenny piece.

By the time the coffee had arrived, Humphrey had told Wratten the

story. "By George!" said Wratten, "that's fine! Now, let's do it

between ourselves. Don't bother about plans. Start right in with the

main facts and put them at the top. Always begin with the fact, and

tell the story in the first two paragraphs--then you've got the rest of

the column to play about in."

The coffee woke Humphrey up. In a quarter of an hour, with Wratten's

help, the story was well advanced, and Selsey's boy had gone away with

the first slips. Whenever he came to a dead stop, Wratten told him how

to continue. "Wrap it up carefully," Wratten said. "Talk about the

dead man's pure love for anything that was artistic: say that he was

a slave to art, and that Miss Sycamore typified art for him. That'll

please her. Say that she never encouraged his attentions, and that

realizing life was empty without her, he killed himself. Make it the

psychological tragedy of a man in love with an Ideal that he could

never attain. And don't gloat."

The story was finished. "That's all right," Wratten said.

"Look here--" Humphrey began, but something choked his throat. He felt

as if Wratten had rescued him from the terror of failure: his glimpse

of brotherhood overwhelmed him.

"Stow it!" said Wratten, unconcernedly. "It's the paper I was thinking

of. Well, I'm off. Don't say a word about it in the morning."

* * * * *

And there it was, in the morning, the whole story with glaring

headlines, an exclusive story for _The Day_. Humphrey, riding down

Gray's Inn Road, saw the bills in the shop-windows, and two men in the

omnibus were discussing it: his head was dull with the drink of last

night, but he felt exhilarated when he thought of it all. He wanted

to tell the two men in the omnibus that he had written the story in

_The Day_. He came to the office and the fellows in the reporters'

room seemed as glad as he was. Willoughby told him of his Surbiton

adventure, and how Mrs Bellowes declined to see anybody. And when he

went into Rivers' room, the great man smiled and said facetiously,

"Well, young man, I suppose you're pleased with yourself." He winked at

Wratten. "You'll be editor one day, eh?"

"It's a jolly good story," said Wratten, "the best _The Day's_ had for

a long time."

Humphrey smiled weakly. He would have told Rivers just how it came to

be such a jolly good story, if Wratten had not frowned meaningly at

him. And not until Rivers said: "Come off that desk, young man, and see

what you can do with this--" handing him a job, did Humphrey realize

that he was at ease, dangling his legs with the great ones.

III

Not everything that Humphrey did was difficult, nor undesirable. There

were times when his card with _The Day_ on it opened the doors of high

places, magically: there were many people who welcomed him, actors

and playwrights and people to whom publicity such as the reporter can

give is necessary. He was received by countesses who were engaged

in propaganda work, and by lordlings who were interested in schemes

for the alleged welfare of the people: these people wanted to be

interviewed, many of them even prepared their statements beforehand.

But, in spite of the advantage they gained, they always treated him

with that polite restraint which the English aristocracy adopt towards

the inferior classes. He obtained wonderful peeps into grand houses,

with huge staircases, and enormous rooms with panelled walls and

candelabra and rare pictures; into Government offices, too, when an

inquiry was necessary, where permanent officials worked, heedless of

the change of Ministers that went on with each new Government; and once

he went into the dressing-room of Sir Wimborne Johns, that very famous

actor, who shook him by the hand, and treated Humphrey as one of his

best friends, and told him two funny stories while the dresser was

adjusting his make-up for Act II.

Then there were the meetings--amazingly futile gatherings of people

who met in the rooms of hotels, the Caxton Hall at Westminster or

the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street. These meetings gave young

Humphrey an insight into the petty little vanities of life. They were

hot-beds of mutual admiration. What was their business and what did

they achieve? Heaven only knows! They had been in existence for years;

this was perhaps the seventh or eighth or twenty-sixth annual meeting

of the Anti-Noise Society, and the world was not yet silent. Yet here

were the old ladies and the old gentlemen and the secretary (in a

frock coat) congratulating themselves on an excellent year's work,

and passing votes of thanks to each other, as though they were giving

lollipops to children. These meetings were all built on one scheme.

They always began half an hour late, because there were so few people

in the room. The reporters (and here Humphrey sometimes met Beaver) sat

at a green baize-covered table near the speakers, and were given all

sorts of printed matter--enough to fill the papers they represented,

and, occasionally, men and women would sidle up to them, and give

their visiting-cards, and say, "Be sure and get the initials right,"

or, "Would you like to interview me on Slavery in Cochin-China?" Then

the chairman (Sir Simon Sloper) arrived, whiskered and florid-faced,

and every one clapped their hands; and the secretary read letters and

telegrams of regret which he passed to the reporters' table; and then

they read the balance-sheet and the annual report, and Miss Heggie

Petty, with the clipped accent of Forfarshire, gave her district

report, and W. Black-Smith, Esq. ("Please don't forget the hyphen in

_The Day_"), delivered _his_ district report, and then the secretary

spoke again, and the treasurer reminded them with a sternly humorous

manner, that the annual subscriptions were overdue, and, finally, came

the great event of the afternoon: Sir Simon Sloper rose to address the

meeting. Everybody was hugely interested, except the reporters, to whom

it was platitudinous and tediously stale: they had heard it all before,

times without number, at all the silly little meetings of foolish

people the Sir Simon Slopers had their moments of adulation and their

reward of a paragraph in the papers. Nothing vital, nothing of great

and lasting importance, was ever done at these meetings, yet every day

six or seven of them were held.

There were societies and counter societies: there was a society for the

suppression of this, and a society for the encouragement of that; there

was the Society for Sunday Entertainment, and the Society for Sunday

Rest; every one seemed to be pulling in opposite directions, and every

one imagined that his or her views were best for the people. Humphrey

found the reflection of all this in the advertisement columns of _The

Day_, where there were advertisements of lotions that grew hair on bald

heads, or ointment that took away superfluous hair; medicines that made

fat people thin, or pills that made thin people fat; tonics that toned

down nervous, high-strung people, and phosphates that exhilarated those

who were depressed. Life was a terribly ailing thing viewed through the

advertisement columns; one seemed to be living in an invalid world,

suffering from lumbago and nervous debility. It was a nightmare of a

world, where people were either too florid or too pale, too fat or too

thin, too bald or too hairy, too tall or too short ... and yet the

world went on unchangingly, just as it did after the meetings of all

the little societies of men or women who met together to give moral

medicine to the world.

It is necessary that you should see these things from the same point of

view as Humphrey, to realize the effect of it all on the development

of his character. For after a dose of such meetings, when the careful

reports of speeches that seemed important enough at the time, were

either cut down by the sub-editors to three lines, or left out of the

paper altogether, he asked himself the question: Why?

Why do all these people hold meetings?

And the answer came to him with a shock: "They are doing it all for

_me_. Everything that is going on is being done for _me_."

And as he realized that he was only an onlooker, a creature apart,

something almost inhuman without a soul for pity or gladness, a dweller

on the outskirts of life, a great longing came over him to join in it

all himself. It seemed that this gigantic game of love and passion and

sudden death and great achievement, was worth learning, and those who

did not learn it, and only looked on while the tumult was whirling

about them, were but shadows that faded away with the sunset of years.

He wanted to join in. He saw, now, that he was drifting nowhere. He,

too, wanted to share in the great game, playing a part that was not

to be ignored, that was needful to the success of the game. Alone he

brooded on it. Beaver chaffed him and asked him what was up. Impossible

to explain the perplexities of his inmost mind to Beaver.

"I don't know," he said, "I've got the hump."

They were having breakfast in the common sitting-room.

"Haven't they printed your stuff?"

"It isn't that," Humphrey said.

"Well, what's up?" demanded the insistent Beaver.

"Everything!" said Humphrey, gloomily, looking round the room. The

bulrushes were still there. "Everything. This ... I feel as we used to

feel at Easterham!"

"I know what's the matter with you," said Beaver, folding his napkin,

and pushing back his chair from the table. He regarded Humphrey with

tremendous wisdom, and bit his nails. "You've got the hump," he said

smiling at his inspiration. "Too many late hours."

"I suppose so."

"Well, look here, don't you get brooding. You want company. I vote we

have lunch together to-day. You come and call for me at the office, at

one."

"Right you are, I will if I can," Humphrey replied.

All the morning he remained in the same mood, grappling with the new

aspect of things that had come to him. Alone he brooded on it: he heard

Rivers running through the programme of the day's events--the King

going to Windsor, a new battleship being launched, a murderer to be

tried at the Old Bailey, a society scandal in the Law Courts--the usual

panorama of every day, at which Rivers told his men to look. And it was

a great thing for the people of Windsor that the King was coming; there

would be flags and guards of honour, and the National Anthem; and the

reputation of a ship-building firm, and the anxiety of thousands rested

on the successful launch of the battleship, and a weary woman in a

squalid slum was waiting tremblingly for the issue of the murder trial;

but all these things, of such great import to those who played in the

game, were not shared by those who looked on. And as Humphrey listened

to Rivers, he realized that though they all moved with life, they were

not of it.

He remembered a story that Willoughby told of a Salvation Army

meeting in the Albert Hall, when General Booth had walked up and down

the platform speaking of the glories of salvation, and, suddenly,

he pointed a finger at the table below. "Are you saved?" he asked,

with his finger shaking at a man who was looking up at him. "Me?"

said the man, looking about him confusedly, and then, with a touch

of indignation at being suddenly dragged into the game, "Me? I'm a

reporter!"

He remembered that story now, and all that it expressed. At the time

Willoughby told it, he thought it was a good joke, but now he saw the

cruel irony of it.

And, in this frame of mind, as he was at grips with himself, he went

to call for Beaver. A light glimmered in the darkness of his mind, and

the Joy and Spirit of Life itself, playing, instead of the Pipes of

Pan, the keys of a typewriter, smiled upon him, and gave him the vision

of a girlish face in a halo of fair hair that seemed threaded with gold

as the sunlight touched it.

IV

He went into the office of the Special News Agency and found himself

in a room where half-a-dozen girls were typewriting. They were making

manifold copies of the hundred and one events that the Special News

Agency "covered" with its Beavers, and supplied at a fixed annual rate

to the newspapers. The Special News Agency were, so to speak, wholesale

dealers in news. You bought the reports of Ministers' speeches or

out-of-the-way lawsuits by the column. It was the same principle

that governed the _Easterham Gazette_ and its columns of stereo. No

newspaper could afford a sufficiently large staff of reporters to

cover everything. So the Special News Agency had its corps of verbatim

shorthand writers, its representatives in every small village, and

in every police-court. There was, of course, no room for the play of

imagination or fantasy or style in these Special News Agency reports,

and it was because of their rather stilted writing that the reporters

on papers like _The Day_ and _The Sentinel_ and _The Herald_ were sent

sometimes over the same ground that the News Agency men had covered,

to see if they could infuse some fresh interest into the story, or at

all events to rewrite it, so that instead of each paper being uniform,

it would strike its individual note in the presentation of news. The

Special News Agency did for London and England what Reuter does for the

world.

There was among the cluster of girls working at their typewriters one

who looked up at Humphrey and smiled, as he waited for Beaver. She was

not a particularly pretty girl, but there was a quality in her hair

and eyes and in the expression of her face that lifted it out of the

commonplace. The mere fact that out of all the girls who were at work

in the office, she alone left the memory of her face to Humphrey, is

sufficient tribute to her personality.

She smiled--and Humphrey remembered that smile, and the hair, that was

dull brown in shadow and gleaming with golden threads in the sunlight,

and the eyes, that were either grey or blue, and very large. And then,

Beaver came and took him to lunch.

They went to a Fleet Street public-house, and lunched off steak and

bubble-and-squeak for a shilling, and all through the lunch Humphrey

was thinking of other things--especially a smile.

"Well," said Beaver, "got over your hump?"

"I suppose so," Humphrey answered. ("I wonder what her name is?")

"Life's not so bad when you get used to it?" Beaver remarked,

contemplating his inky thumbs. "The trouble is that just as you're

getting used to it, it's time to die. Eh?"

Humphrey's thoughts were wandering again. ("I believe those eyes

were saying something to me?") Beaver continued in his chatter, and

occasionally Humphrey, catching the sense of his last few words, agreed

with a mechanical "Yes," or a nod ("Why did she smile at me?"), and at

last he blurted out, "I say, Beaver, what's the name of the girl that

sits nearest the door in your office?"

"O lord! I don't know their names," said Beaver; "I've got other things

to think about. What d'you want to know for?"

"She's like some one I knew in Easterham," Humphrey replied, glibly.

"I'll find out for you, if you like."

"No--don't bother. It doesn't matter at all."

The next day he was walking down Fleet Street when he perceived her

looming through the crowd. He was conscious of a queer emotion that

attacked him, a sudden dryness of the throat, and a quickening of all

the pulses of his body. His whole being became swiftly taut: he almost

stood still. And, as she bore down upon him, he saw that she was not so

tall as he had imagined, but her face looked divinely attractive under

the shadow of the spreading hat, and because the sun was shining her

hair glittered like a halo. Now, she was close to him, and he found

himself praying to God that she would look at him, and smile again; and

the next moment he felt that the ground would sink beneath him if she

did so, and he longed to look the other way, but could not. The people

passing to and fro knew nothing of the terrific disturbance that was

going on in the mind of the young man walking down Fleet Street. Now

they were level--he raised his hat--it was over, and the memory of her

smile had sunk yet deeper within him. Yes, she had remembered him, and

nodded to him, and that smile--what did it mean? It was not an enticing

smile, it was an almost imperceptible movement of the closed lips, yet

it held some magic in it. It seemed to him that though they had never

spoken, she knew all about him; she came across his life, smiling in

silence, and he was aware that something triumphant and fresh had come

into his life, with her passing, just as he knew for a certainty that,

before long, he would learn the secret of her smile, when he spoke to

her.

He went back to work, curiously elated and happy for no reason at all

that he could understand. Things were unaltered, and yet, somehow or

other, they were different. He felt, suddenly, as if years had been

added to his age; he felt that he had met something real in life

at last, and, when he came to analyse it, it was nothing but an

intangible smile, and the glance of two grey eyes.

That night, as he was on his way home, he chanced to meet Wratten. This

tall man with the high forehead and curly hair was one of the puzzles

of the office. He was a man who held aloof from his fellows, and

because of that, they thought he was morose. Humphrey had a tremendous

admiration for him, since the night when Wratten had helped him. He

seemed so very splendid: he did daring things, and he never failed. The

secret of his success was a brutality that stultified all his better

feelings when he was on business. And he was a man who never left his

quarry, though it meant waiting hours and hours for him.

"Hullo," said Wratten, "where are you off to?"

"Home," said Humphrey; "where are you?"

"I'm going home too. I live at the Hampden Club at King's Cross."

They were near Guilford Street "Won't you come up, Wratten, and have a

drink in my rooms--I live here, you know."

"I don't take anything stronger than lemonade," said Wratten.

Humphrey laughed, and unlocked the door. He felt it an honour to have

Wratten as a guest, if only for a few minutes. They went upstairs, and

Humphrey apologized for the bulrushes. Wratten laughed: "Why don't you

suggest to Rivers that you should write a story about the dangers of

bulrushes in sitting-rooms: interview a doctor or two, and make 'em say

that bulrushes accumulate dust. Invent a new disease, 'Bulrush Throat.'

That'll make your landlady nervous."

"By George," Humphrey said, "I will; that's a fine idea." Doubtless,

you remember the scare that was raised a few years ago when _The Day_

discovered the terror that lurked in the sitting-room bulrush; you

remember, perhaps, the correspondence, and the symposium of doctors'

views that followed, and _The Day's_ leading article on the mighty

matter. Humphrey Quain set the ball rolling, and was careful to leave

marked copies of _The Day_ in places where Mrs Wayzgoose was certain to

see them, and the bulrushes disappeared very soon afterwards. Thus is

history made.

"I owe you a lot of thanks," Humphrey said, "for the way you helped me

the other night."

It was the first time they had referred to the matter of the street

suicide.

"I didn't want you to be let down," said Wratten. "The life's rough

enough as it is, a little help goes a long way. But you steer clear of

too much drink, Quain. That's the ruin of so many good men...."

"I couldn't help it."

"Of course you couldn't--most men are drunkards from habit and not

from choice. But you can take it from me, there's no room in Fleet

Street for a man who drinks too much. They used to think it was fine

Bohemianism in the old days, when a man wasn't a genius unless he was

drunk half the time. Don't you believe it. It's the sober men who do

the work and win through."

"It depends on what you mean by winning through."

"Well, there are many ways.... I suppose we've all got different ideas

and ideals. I want to rear a family and keep a wife."

"You aren't married then?"

"Not yet. I'm going to be married ... soon," said Wratten, simply. "I

think marriage is the best thing for us. We want something to humanize

our lives. It is the only chance of happiness for most of us ... the

knowledge that whatever happens, however hard the work may be, we come

home ... and there's a wife waiting. I know plenty of journalists who

would have gone under if it were not for the wives. Splendid wives!

They sit at home patiently, knowing all our troubles, comforting us,

and keeping us cheerful. By God! Quain, the journalists' wives are the

most beautiful and loyal women in the world...."

Humphrey smiled--and this was the man they thought was morose!

"I get maudlin and sentimental when I think of 'em. They know our

weaknesses, and our mistakes, and they bear with us. They smooth our

hair and touch our faces, and all the misery of the day goes away with

the magic of their fingers. They make little dinners for us, that we

never eat, and they never let us see how unhappy they are, too ... I

know, I know ... I've seen so many journalists' homes, and they're all

the same ... they're simply overgrown children who let themselves be

mothered by their wives."

Humphrey thought of the girl he had passed that day in the street....

"I wish I were you," he said. "It must be rather fine to have some one

pegging away at you always to do your best: it must be rather fine to

have a smile waiting for you at the end of the long day's work."

"Fine!" said Wratten, "it's the only thing that's left to us. We're

robbed of everything else that matters. We haven't a soul to call our

own, and we can't even rule our lives. Time, that precious heritage

of every one else, doesn't belong to us. We're supposed to have no

hearts, we're just machines that have always to be working at top speed

... but, thank God, there's one woman who believes in us, and who is

waiting for us always."

"It's funny you should talk like this," Humphrey said, "to-night, of

all nights...." He was thinking again of himself and the girl who had

crossed the path of his life.

Wratten knocked out the ashes of his pipe, and coughed with that little

dry cough that was characteristic of him. "Oh! I don't know," he said.

"Nothing funny when you come to think about it. I thought you might

have heard it in the office. I'm being married to-morrow. By the way, I

wish you'd come along and be best man: I haven't had time to fix up for

one."

V

It was just an incident of almost less importance than the daily work,

this business of getting married. But it was an incident that left

a singular impression on Humphrey. Wratten's marriage was a prosaic

affair, in a registry office, horribly formal, without the idealizing

surroundings of a church and the grand solemnity of the marriage

service. It took place at ten o'clock on a rather cold morning in June.

Wratten himself was extremely nervous, and it was his nervousness that

made his manner almost brusque; he must have been a gloomy lover, and

yet, as Humphrey saw the dark-eyed bride he was wedding, and marked the

pride in her eyes as she looked up to him, and the fluttering of her

lips as she whispered things to him, he knew that somewhere in this

rugged blunt nature of Wratten there was a vein of golden tenderness

and beauty.

The marriage was oddly depressing: perhaps it was that the shadow of

coming disaster hovered over them; perhaps Humphrey heard Wratten's

words echoing in his ears, "They sit at home patiently ... knowing all

our troubles, and they never let us see that they, too, are unhappy."

Humphrey did his duty as best man: there was a girl friend of the bride

there, and he looked after them all, and cracked jokes, and made them

sign their names in the right places, and Wratten had half a dozen

little commissions for him to carry out. He had been so busy yesterday,

that there had not been time to clear up everything.

When it was all over, and Wratten stood on the threshold of a new

life, with his wife at his side, and a glad, proud smile on his

handsome face, they came out of the registry office, and the girl

friend emptied a bag of confetti over them, as they stepped into the

cab that was to take them to Waterloo--they were going to Weymouth for

a honeymoon. Some of the coloured pieces of paper fell on Humphrey's

coat collar.

"Good-bye, good luck," Humphrey said.

Wratten clasped his hand very tightly. Once again he smiled, and

gave his little dry, nervous cough. "Good-bye, old man," he said

affectionately. "Thanks awfully for coming. I think I'm going to be

happy at last," and the cab drove away.

Humphrey saw the girl friend into an omnibus. "Didn't Maisie look

splendid." He noticed that the girl friend wore an engagement-ring on

her finger, and thenceforth he lost all interest in her.

He went to the office as usual, but he did not tell any one that he

had been to Wratten's wedding. Now, he could feel quite at home in the

reporters' room, and he even had a desk which, by custom, had become

his own. He was more sure of himself than he had been a few months ago,

though, in his inmost heart, he was still a little afraid of Rivers.

It was Ferrol who gave Humphrey confidence in himself. He called him

into his room, and asked him bluntly how he liked the work.

"Very much," Humphrey replied, his eyes glistening brightly, and again

Ferrol was reminded of the long years that had passed, when romantic

days were his. The boy was shaping well. That was fine, thought Ferrol.

He meant Humphrey to have every chance; he wanted to see what stuff was

in him.

"That's good," said Ferrol, stroking his moustache. "Mr Rivers gives a

satisfactory account of you."

The passion that ruled him, the passion for making men and

reputations, was strong upon him just then. He saw Humphrey as raw

material, and he meant to mould him into a finished article after his

own heart. He would make no mistakes, it should be done slowly, step by

step; he would leave Humphrey to fight his own battles, and only if he

fell bloody and wounded, would he come forward and succour the boy.

"I hope you'll keep it up," he said. "Don't get into trouble, but come

to me if you do." He smiled and still caressed that fierce moustache.

"I suppose you've heard I'm an ogre--don't believe any tale you hear.

Just come straight to me when you are in any difficulty."

Humphrey came out of the room, exhilarated, and almost drunk with pride

and happiness. It was Ferrol's magic again: a few words from him were

like drops of oil to creaking machinery--they instilled fresh energy

and desire into men, and made their hearts ardent for conquest. It was

worth working night and day to have smooth words of praise from Ferrol

himself, to know that he was watching you, powerful in his invisibility.

* * * * *

That afternoon, as he was returning from some engagement, he saw the

girl with the smile coming towards him again. Afar off, it seemed, he

was aware of her coming. It was as if her presence sent silent messages

to him, vibrating through the air. Long before she appeared he had

looked expectantly before him, knowing that she would approach him.

Something in his mind linked up this neat blue-clad figure with the

episode of the morning, and the little registry office, and Wratten

saying, with that radiant smile of his, "I think I am going to be happy

at last."

And, quite on the impulse of the moment, he made up his mind. She

passed him, and left him all a-quiver with excitement, and then he

turned and overtook her. His heart was beating quickly in the rhapsody

of it all. She stopped, noticing him at her side, hesitating, nervous.

"I say...."

"Oh!" She smiled, and he saw her cheeks flush with colour, and at once

he noted her wonderfully slender throat and the mysterious beauty of

her breathing.

He was tongue-tied for a moment. She had stopped and he was speaking

to her, and he was lost in the miracle of those few seconds, when he

realized that in all the loneliness of this vast London, they had met

and spoken at last. They stood in a little island of their own making,

while people coming and going broke in a hurried surge all about them.

The newsboys ran up Fleet Street calling the hour of the latest race,

and, above all, came the noise and restlessness of the traffic beating

up and down the street.

"I say..." Humphrey began, "it's awfully rude of me to stop you like

this...."

She smiled again. "Not at all," she said, in a gentle voice.

"Could you tell me if Mr Beaver happens to be in the office now?" he

asked.

"I don't think he is," she said. "Why not come up and see?"

"N--no--it doesn't really matter." Humphrey laughed nervously. "I shall

see him this evening. We dig together, you know."

"Then it doesn't matter...?" she said.

"It doesn't matter," Humphrey agreed.

He waited forlornly: now she would pass away again, always elusive,

just flitting in and out of his life like this, a disturbing factor.

But still she waited, and Humphrey was emboldened.

"I say ..." he stammered. "Won't you come and have a cup of tea?"

She glanced upwards at the clock.

"Do come," he said, half turning to lead the way. "There's a Lyons just

near here."

"Oh, well ..." she laughed and followed him.

* * * * *

"My name's Quain," he said, as they were drinking their cups of tea.

"Humphrey Quain." He waited longingly, hoping that she would understand

why he had told her his name.

She drooped her eyes; everything she did was exaggerated in Humphrey's

imagination. She gave him her name as if she were yielding up part of

herself to him.

"Mine is Filmer."

It was terribly unsatisfactory just to know that.

"I suppose you'll think me rude ..." he began.

"Oh! you must guess...."

"I never could. I should guess wrong."

"Try," she coaxed. "It begins with L."

He guessed Lily the second time, and she corrected him. "You're nearly

right," she said, "it's Lilian."

"Lilian," he echoed, admiringly.

"It's a hateful name," she pouted.

"It's a lovely name," he said.

"Do you really think so?"

"Rather!"

"Why?" she smiled again.

What an absurd question to ask. Why, because--but how could Humphrey

tell her, when they had hardly known each other for a quarter of an

hour.

"I hope you didn't think it rude of me stopping you like that," he

ventured, after a pause.

"Oh no ... though I suppose you think it's dreadful of me to be sitting

with you like this."

To tell the truth, Humphrey considered the whole thing was

extraordinarily dashing--that he should be sitting facing her over a

cup of tea; to have learnt her name--Lilian Filmer--Lilian, beautiful

name!--and to be carrying it off so calmly.

"Not at all," he said.

Her next words fell like a shower of cold water over him.

"You're such a boy," she said, with her eyes smiling indulgently at him.

He resented that, of course. "I'm twenty-one," he said loudly. "You're

not more than twenty-one, I'm sure."

"Perhaps I'm not," she answered, taking a tiny watch from her bosom.

She sighed. "I must go."

"Look here," said Humphrey, "are we going to meet again?"

"What do you want to see me again for?"

"I just want to," Humphrey said. "I'm all alone."

"Alone in London," she laughed. "Tragic boy ... oh, how miserable you

look. Don't you like being called a boy?"

"I don't mind what you call me, so long as you'll let me see you again.

To-morrow's Saturday...."

"Oh! I can't manage to-morrow."

"Well, on Sunday, then."

"I never go out on Sundays."

"On Monday," said Humphrey, desperately.

She considered the matter. "I know I'm engaged on Monday evening."

"We'll have lunch together."

"Very well," she said.

And, after that, they shook hands quite formally, and parted in Fleet

Street. He had been in heaven for twenty minutes.

There were three days to Monday.

Lilian!

VI

Out of this period of his career, Humphrey rescued memories of moments

of ineffable happiness. They came intermittently, between long blanks

of doubt and painful uncertainty, when his mind was troubled with

unsatisfied yearnings and half-understood desires. He was able one day

to look back upon it all, with an air of detached interest, like a man

looking at a cinematograph picture, and he saw meetings, and partings,

and all the ferment of his wooing of Lilian.

There was something intimate and secret about their meetings that

pleased his palate, hungry for adventure, and this was a part of life

that belonged wholly to them; he was indeed taking a part in the great

game.

They met on the Monday at the hour appointed, and it seemed

extraordinarily unreal, like a dream within a dream, that she should be

wonderfully alive and smiling by his side. Fleet Street, the office,

Rivers, and the long toil of the day were forgotten in a moment, such

was the miracle of her being. It seemed impossible to him, on that

day, that unhappiness and failure could darken his world. There was

something eternal about her that moved him with strong, unquenchable

desires for triumph and conquest. Her voice vibrated through him like

the throb of a war-march, urging him to great endeavour.

So commonplace their greeting; so utterly inadequate to express the

prodigious flutterings of his heart! They should have met alone in

some solitary forest, when all the colours of the world were rushing

to the clouds, in the hours of the sunset. He could have led her to a

resting-place of moss and fern, and whispered to her all the thoughts

that were in his mind....

But here in the world of everyday, what romance could survive the

prosy clamour of it all. There was nothing to say but "Good-morning,"

and halting, nervous things about the weather, and the theatre, and

each other's work. Anything of deeper import must be told by sighs and

silences.

And thus, they parted again, after their lunch in a dingy Italian

restaurant in the Strand, he with all his longings unfulfilled, and

with a deeper sense of something that had been lacking in his life.

Why could he not have told her all that he had felt? Why was it

necessary for him to mask and screen his emotions with absurd talk

that only seemed to waste precious opportunities? She rose before him

in his imagination, amazingly distinct and real, no longer a shadow,

but a real person. He conjured her presence at will before him, and

she appeared as he liked to see her best, with her eyes grey and

thoughtful, and the sunlight gilding her hair where it swept up from

her white brow. Thus, when she was not there, he lived with her, and

told her all the things he dared not say to her.

And nobody knew of these exquisite moments but himself. To mention

her to Beaver, now, would be sacrilege. There was but one man who, he

thought, would understand what was passing through him, and that was

Wratten, who was away on his honeymoon.

They met several times during the next few weeks; it seemed to him

that she would not consent to meet him if her heart did not echo his

own. And yet, she gave no sign. There was always an air of chastened

constraint about them both. He helped her adjust her fluffy feather boa

once, and his hand brushed her cheek, and he remembered the feel of it,

smooth and soft, like the touch of the downy skin of a peach.

All the time, of course, in the intervals of these meetings, there was

the same breathless round of work to be done. Sometimes he would have

to cancel their arrangements because he was given an assignment just

at the very hour they had set apart for themselves--it was done by a

hurried scrawl on office paper--"Dear Miss Filmer, I'm so sorry," and

so forth. Once he had written "Dearest," but he tore it up, fearing he

might lose her for ever. He could not risk offending her. He knew that

she was rigorously strict in certain conventions.

"I say ... may I call you Lilian?" he had asked one day, and she

had glanced at him with a stricken look, and said, "Oh--please,

please don't, Mr Quain." She had even laid her hand upon his, with a

persuasive gesture. It was a distinct pat--the sort of pat one bestows

when a child is to be coaxed into goodness.

She was very perplexing.

Her manner could alter in the most unexpected and unaccountable manner.

One day she might be quite gay, and he would feel that now it was

merely a question of moments before he could storm her heart and carry

it: and the next time he saw her she would be strangely distant, as

though she regretted the progress they had made. Or else, she would be

provokingly casual, and wound him deliberately in his weakest spot. She

would call him a boy, with a little smile and play of the eyebrows.

Ah! that rankled more than anything she said or did, for the whole

happiness of his life depended on his being taken seriously, and at his

own valuation--and he valued himself as a man of the world, with the

experience of double his years.

It was, perhaps, this attitude of hers towards him that made him

tell her of his work, which, in these days, became so magnified in

importance to him. When by virtue of _The Day_ he got behind the scenes

of any phase of London life, he used to make a point of telling her

just how it was done, in a rather cock-a-whoop manner.

"Do you know," she said, "we have in our office thirty men who are

doing the same thing, and, in all London, there are hundreds more?"

That crushed him entirely. She thought him vain. They very nearly

quarrelled seriously.

One day Jamieson, the dramatic critic of _The Day_, met him in the

office. Jamieson was a tubby little man with a high Shakespearean

forehead, who exuded cheeriness. He was a professional optimist. He

used to depress the reporters' room with his boisterous happiness: he

was so glad that the flowers were blooming, and the grass was green,

and that there were children, and the joy of life, and so forth.

He accosted Humphrey with twinkling eyes. "Glorious day, Quain," he

said; "makes you feel glad that you're alive, doesn't it? Ah! my boy,

it's fine to see the streets on a day like this--full of pretty girls

in their spring dresses."

"I don't get time to think about the weather, unless I'm writing about

it," said Humphrey, with a laugh.

"Buck up, my boy," said Jamieson, patting him on the back. "You want

to look on the bright side of things on a day like this.... By the

way, would you like to have two stalls for the Garrick to-morrow. It's

the same old play they've had for two hundred nights--they only want a

paragraph for _The Day_. I've got a first night on at His Majesty's."

Humphrey accepted the tickets gladly, for he had a vision of an evening

at the theatre with Lilian, and Jamieson went on his way, leaving in

his wake a trail of chuckling optimism. It happened to be a Saturday

night, when he was quite free, and so he arranged with Lilian to meet

her at Victoria--she lived at Battersea Park--and then they would have

some dinner before they went to the theatre.

* * * * *

In those days Humphrey had not risen to the luxury of an opera hat; he

wore a bowler hat, and his coat-collar buttoned up over the white tie

of his evening-dress. He thrust his hands into his pockets and waited

at Victoria Station for her. She was to meet him at a quarter to seven,

and it was now five minutes to the hour and she had not come. He stood

there, absolutely white with the tension of the passing moments. It

seemed that he had been waiting an eternity, and he had lived through

a thousand moments of disappointed expectation. Others who had been

waiting there when he came had long since claimed those whom they had

come to meet, and walked them off with smiles and laughter. He was

still waiting.

* * * * *

Seven o'clock!

What on earth could have happened?

Visions of possible disasters crossed his mind: a train wreck and a cab

accident; or perhaps she was ill and was not coming. There would be

no way of communicating with him, and he would have to go on waiting.

Or, perhaps, she had repented of her consent to make the evening

glorious for him. The suspense was really terrible. There was nothing

to do except to watch the newsboys cheerily gathering the magazines

and papers together into piles, and shuttering the bookstall. He saw

people running for trains, and whenever the hiss of steam announced the

arrival of another train, he hurried to the wicket-gate to peer into

the recesses of the crowd that struggled through it, in the hope of

seeing her face a second before she actually appeared in person.

At five past seven he was still moodily waiting.

It was cruel of her to keep him dallying with patience like this. She

must have known that he would be waiting for her on the moment. How

little she cared if she could not even be punctual to the time they had

arranged. He began to feel stale and dusty, as if he had been in his

evening-dress for years.

He made up his mind to be very angry with her when she came.

And lo! she was at his side: more wonderful than ever, so wonderful

that he scarcely recognized her. She had come through the crowd at the

wicket-gate, floating towards him, it seemed, like a cloud of filmy,

fluffy white. Her face was radiantly flushed and smiling, and he sprang

towards her with a cry of relief and gladness.

"Here I am," she announced. "I wondered if you'd be here." (As if he

had not been waiting heart in mouth, for all that time.)

She wore no hat, but her hair was done in a way that he had never seen

before. It seemed to change her strangely. If anything, it made her

look more beautiful, as it rose in little waves from her forehead and

fell about her ears in wayward threads of sparkling brown. And there

was a black velvet ribbon that went in and out among the glory of her

hair.

He slipped his hand beneath her white cloak that was fastened tightly

to her chin, to guide her through the clumsy throng of station people.

Her arm was warm and bare, as soft as satin, and there was something

sacred in the very touch of it.

It was an occasion for a cab. They chattered on the way of everyday

things, though all the time, with her by his side, so close, so

beautiful, he could only think of Paradise.

"I thought you were never coming," he said, with a dry throat.

"Was I so late?" she asked, with a laugh. "I couldn't help it. I ran

like mad, and just saw the train going out of the station."

He wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked, but just then they

arrived at the little restaurant in Soho where they were going to

have dinner. He went in with her, supremely conscious that every one

was staring at them. There was a stuffy smell of hot food, and the

tables were crowded with diners--very few of them in evening-dress.

He was passed on from waiter to waiter until a table was found, and

then Lilian unfastened her white cloak, and he helped her to take it

off, with a queer sensation of awe and wonder. She stood before him

transformed, another Lilian from the one he had known in the street

where they worked. He was amazed that she did not realize how this

white display of her neck and arms and gently breathing throat was

dazzling him with its splendour. He was amazed that she could sit

there, revealing her richest beauty for the first time, and be totally

unembarrassed--as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world....

The dinner was no doubt excellent, but Humphrey could not eat. He made

a pretence of it, but he felt it was violating the ecstasy of these

moments to eat before her. He only wanted to sit and look at her. He

drank quite a lot of wine, almost a whole bottle in fact, for she took

just half a glassful with water. It was cheap stuff, masquerading under

the vague label of "Margaux," and it sent his imagination rioting. He

was conscious of being deliciously extravagant when he ordered coffees

and liqueurs, though the whole bill came to little more than twelve

and six. Then they went to the theatre, and he bought her chocolates,

and they sat in the stalls, side by side, for nearly three hours. He

tried to appear normal--impossible! He knew what was coming: he fought

against it for quite a long time, but some primeval instinct in him was

stronger than his will--his hand sought hers, when the lights were low,

and closed upon it. If she had withdrawn her hand, the whole castle

of his dream would have come crashing about his ears. But she did

not: she let it rest there. Once or twice he glanced at her sidewise,

but she seemed oblivious of him. Her gaze was fixed on the players,

her lips parted with pleasure; the pendant that hung from her neck

stirring gently with the movement of her bosom. She was enjoying the

play, but Humphrey could pay no attention to it. He could only think

of her. How real was all this: how every moment counted as a moment of

pure, throbbing enjoyment. And he thought of Rivers, and the office,

and Selsey and the sub-editors' room, messenger boys and the tape

machines--what did it all matter beside the incomparable happiness of

these moments. Knowledge came to him subconsciously: it was for this

that one worked and suffered.

* * * * *

As they were going in the cab together to Victoria through St. James's

Park, where the lamps make a necklet of yellow round the dark shadows

of the trees, and the moon was white in her face, he leaned towards her

and kissed her on the lips. She gave a little dry sob, and her head

drooped on his shoulder, so that he could bend over her and kiss her

with all the impetuous longing of youth. And suddenly she shook herself

free with an extraordinary melting look of tenderness and pity in her

eyes. He thought she was angry, but she only smiled and patted his

cheek.

And he felt as if he had passed through the portals of a new world,

whose music beat gloriously on his ears, and whose colours leapt before

his eyes in flashes of brilliance.

"Lilian.... Lilian," he whispered, calling her by her name for the

first time.

"It's only for to-night," she said.... "Why did you kiss me?"

"Lilian," he said again.

They came out into the glare of the streets near Victoria: romance

dropped away from her as the Park was left behind. She sat upright and

fumbled with her hair.

"You oughtn't to have kissed me.... I oughtn't to have...."

The discussion of it was horrible to him. It jarred. He, too, came

suddenly back to reality.

"It was only for to-night, of course," she said, with a nervous laugh.

"It's not!" he said, positively. "It's for to-morrow and for all time."

They drew up at the station. It was all over. The idyll ended in a

clatter of horses' hoofs and hissing of steam, and engines whistling,

and the hurrying to catch the last train.

"Look here ..." said Humphrey, as he stood by the carriage door.

"I'm not angry," she whispered. "It was my fault."

The guard blew his whistle and waved his flag. Humphrey's heart was

bursting with the hideous intrusion of modernity.

"Good-night," she said. "Good-night and thank you. It's been beautiful."

There was just a second left to him, and he made use of it. She was

leaning out of the window, and he swung himself on to the footboard and

whispered--

"Lilian--I love you. I'll write to you to-night."

Before she could reply, there were cries of "Stand away there," and the

train swung out of the station.

That night Humphrey wrote his first love-letter, and told her all the

things he had been wanting to say for weeks.

VII

They became engaged.

It was a secret, furtive affair, for Lilian desired it. He gave her his

signet ring--a present from his father--and she wore it, though not on

her engagement finger, in case people should ask questions. She gave

Humphrey a photograph of herself--in evening-dress--which he carried

about in his pocket-book, to take out and look at frequently. He wrote

to her every night--even when they had met during the day--long, long

letters full of very high-sounding sentiments and praise of her.

Heavens! the pages he covered with great promises. Her letters were

not of the same quality: they were rather snappy and business-like,

and held in them no romance or sentiment. Now and again she called him

"dear" in her letters, and sometimes "dearest," but they were for the

most part inadequate letters, that made him feel as if he were being

cheated out of the full measure of his love-affair.

She told him that she was five years older than he was, and it only

puffed him with greater pride, to think that he had conquered her in

spite of his youth.

In very truth, it was a conquest! For days and days she had withstood

the eager battery of his assault on her heart. "No," she had said

gently, "you're a dear boy and I like you ... but let's be friends."

He went through all the phases of anger, sulkiness, despair and gloom,

pleading with her daily, until the final exultation came. He used

to see her home as far as Battersea, whenever his work allowed him

freedom. There was a narrow, dark lane through which they walked, so

that he could talk in the darkness of his love for her. Always, before

they parted, she allowed him to kiss her. She kissed him too, and often

they stood, with beating hearts, and lips met in one long kiss. He drew

her to him, yielding and supple, and told her that she must marry him.

She could resist no more, she let her head sink on his shoulder, and

his finger caressed her chin and neck, and they stayed thus fettered

with the exquisite moments of love.

"I will be so good to you," Humphrey murmured.

"Yes ... yes ..." she whispered, her last resistance gone. And that was

how they became engaged.

But out of the glamour of their love and kisses there emerged the grey

talk of practical things. "We don't know anything about each other,"

she cried.

"I know you.... I feel that I have known you all my life!" he insisted.

"Don't you feel like that towards me?" he asked, anxiously.

"Perhaps I do," she said, and Humphrey went into raptures over it.

"Isn't it wonderful," he said, "to think that only a few weeks ago we

were really strangers, and now you have been in my arms--how can we be

strangers, Lilian, and kiss as we do?"

"Have you told your mother yet?" he asked, one day.

"No--not yet," she said.

"Oughtn't I to meet her?"

"I suppose so--wait a little longer," she pleaded. "Have you told your

aunt?"

"You asked me not to. I'd love to take you down to her--she'd like you,

I'm certain. It wouldn't matter if she didn't."

They made plans, of course: nothing was settled about the day of their

marriage. It was a question whether life was possible for them both on

three pounds a week. "I'm sure to get a rise, soon," said Humphrey.

"I'll go and ask for one, and tell Ferrol I'm going to be married. We

can live splendidly on four pounds a week. Heaps of people live on

less."

"I don't know.... It's mother I'm thinking of," she confessed.

"What about mother?" he asked.

"I'm wondering what she'll do without me."

"There are your sisters," he said. "How many are there, let me see"--he

ticked them off--"Mabel, Florence and Edith. That's enough for her to

go on with."

Her face grew wistful. "Yes--that's enough," she echoed, her eyes

not looking at him. "I ought to have told you, Humphrey, long before

this, but mother's rather dependent on me and Edith. There's Harry,

of course, but he's still at the Technical Institute--he'll be able

to help some day. Florence is still at school--and Mabel--Mabel's got

something the matter with her hip."