his thoughts with an alarming result. He found himself pausing, pen in
hand, at his desk in the reporters' room, thinking, "Would Elizabeth
be pleased with this?..." And an impulse that needed all his strength
to combat seized him to abandon the set form into which _The Day_ had
cast his thoughts, to criticize and to express his own individual
impression, whether they accorded or not with the views held by _The
Day_. This was altogether new and disturbing. He was a mouthpiece whose
mere duty was to record the words of others by interviews, or a painter
to present pictures and not opinions. Conscience and convictions were
luxuries that belonged to the critics of art, and the leader-writers.
There came to him days of unqualified unhappiness, when he was
possessed by doubts. For the first time he mistrusted the value of his
work: he began to see that the fundamental truths of life were outside
his scope. Cities might be festering with immorality and slums; vice
might parade openly, but these things could never be touched on in a
daily newspaper. Nobody was to blame, least of all those who controlled
the newspaper, for it is not the business of a daily to deal with the
morals of existence.... It is not easy to analyse his feelings ... but,
as a result of all this vague tormenting and apprehension, the old
thrill at the power and wonder of the office which throbbed with daily
activities forsook him, leaving in its place nothing but the desolating
knowledge of the littleness and futility of it all.
* * * * *
The phase passed: the variety of the work enthralled him again. He
travelled to distant towns and remote villages, and whenever he was
in the grip of his work, all thoughts of Elizabeth Carr departed from
him. He obtained extraordinary glimpses into the lives of other people;
he acquired a knowledge into the working of things that was denied to
those who only gleaned their knowledge second-hand from the things that
he and others wrote. He saw things all day long: the plottings, the
achievements and the failures of mankind.
The other men of the Street flitted into his life and out again at the
decree of circumstance. For a week, perhaps, half-a-dozen of them would
be thrown together in some part of England. They met at the hotels;
they formed friendships, and they parted again, knowing, with the
fatalism of their craft, that they would forgather perhaps next week,
perhaps next year. There was no sentiment in these friendships.
There were the photographers, too. A new race of men had come into
Fleet Street, claiming kinship with the reporters, yet divided by
difference of thought and outlook upon news. They were remarkable in
their way, the product of the picture daily paper. And their coming
marked the doom of the artist illustrators in the newspapers. They were
the newest of the new generation, shattering every conception even of
the younger men of the manner in which a journalist should perform his
duty. The photographers were drawn, as a class, from the studios and
operating-rooms of the professional photographer. They forsook the
posing of babies and young men in frock coats for the photographic
quest of news.
Their finger-tips and nails were brown with the stain of iodoform,
and for them there was no concealment of their profession, for they
went through life with the burden of their cameras slung over their
shoulders. Their audacity was astounding, even to Humphrey and his
friends, who knew the necessity of audacity themselves.
They ranged themselves outside the Law Courts, or the Houses of
Parliament, or wherever one of the many interests of the day centred,
and when a litigant or a Cabinet Minister appeared, a dozen men closed
towards him, their cameras at the level of their eyes, and a dozen
intermittent "clicking" noises marked the achievement of their quest.
They saw life in pictures; a speech was nothing to them but the open
mouth and the raised arm of the speaker; the poignancy of death left
them unmoved before the need of focus and exposure.
The difficulties of their work seemed so immense to Humphrey that
reporting seemed child's play beside it. For not only had they actually
to be on the spot, to overcome prejudices and barriers, but, once
there, they had to select and group their picture, and to reckon with
the light and time. And though the photographers and the reporters were
far removed from one another by the external nature of their work,
though neither class saw life from the identical standpoint, yet they
were interdependent, and linked by the same ceaseless forces working
towards one common end....
Sometimes, also, in out-of-the-way places, Humphrey met men who
reminded him of his days on the _Easterham Gazette_, men with
attenuated minds who were even more absorbed in their work than the
London reporter. They had a shameless way of never concealing their
identity: they were always the "reporter"; some of them never saw the
dignity of their calling, they were careless of speech and appearance,
seeming to place themselves on the level of inferior people, and
submitting to the undisguised contempt of the little local authorities,
who spoke to them scornfully as "You reporters."
Yet, among these, Humphrey found scholars and men of strange
experience. Their salaries were absurdly low for the work they
did--thirty shillings to two pounds a week was the average; their
lives were a thousand times more dismal and humdrum than the lives of
the London men. And, in spite of these, many London men sighed for
the pleasant country work. Whenever Humphrey heard a man speak of the
leisure and peace of country journalism, he told them of Easterham and
its dreadful monotony.
He had interior glimpses, too, of other newspaper offices; not a town
in the kingdom without its sheet of printed paper, and its reporter
recording the day or the week. These offices held his imagination by
their sameness. Whether it was Belfast or Birmingham, Edinburgh or
Exeter, their plan was uniform. There was always the narrow room, with
its paper-strewn desks or tables at which the reporters sat; always the
same air of hazy smoke hovered level with the electric-light bulbs;
the same type of alert-eyed men, with the taut lips and frown of those
who think swiftly, came into the room, smoking a cigarette or a pipe
(but rarely a cigar), and brought with them a familiar suggestion of
careless good-fellowship as they sat down to the work of transcribing
their notes. And, always, wherever he went, the pungent smell of
printer's ink was in his nostrils, the metallic rustle of shifting
types from the linotype room, and the deep, rumbling sound of machinery
in his ears.
Ah, when he got down to the machines that moved it all, he probed to
the depths of the simple greatness. Those big, strong men who worked
below it all, and lived by the labour of it, made a parable of the
whole social system. Of what avail would all their writing be, if it
were not for the men and the machines below?
Once he went down the stone steps to the high-roofed basement of _The
Day_. He went at midnight, just when the printing was about to begin.
It was as if he had penetrated into the utmost secrecy of the office.
Here were the things of which nobody seemed to think; here, again,
were men in their aprons stained with grease and oily ink; men with
bare, strong arms lifting the curved plates of metal, and fixing them
to the cylinders; each man doing his allotted work, oiling a bearing
here, tightening a nut there, moving busily about the mighty growth of
machinery that filled the brightly lit room. The sight of that tangle
of iron and steel confused his thoughts. He understood nothing of it
all. Those great machines rose before him, towering massively to the
roof, tier upon tier of black and glittering metal, with rods and
cranks, and weird gaps here and there showing their bowels of polished
steel. The enormous rolls of paper which he had seen carried on carts
and hoisted many a time into the paper-department of the office, were
waiting by each machine, threaded on to a rod of steel. Their blank
whiteness reflected the light of the electric lamps.
And then, suddenly, a red light glowed, and somebody shouted, and a man
turned a small wheel in the wall--just as a motor-car driver turns
the wheel of the steering gear--and the great machines broke into
thunderous noises. The din was appalling. It was loud and continuous,
and the clamour of it deadened the ears.
Humphrey looked and saw the white reels of paper spinning, and, through
the forest of iron and steel, he could trace a cascade of running
whiteness, as the paper was spun between the rollers, up and down
and across, until it met the curved plates of type, and ran beneath
them, to reappear black with the printed words. And the columns looked
like blurred, thin lines in the incredible rapidity of the passing
paper. The moments were magical; he tried to follow the course of this
everlasting ribbon of paper, but he could not. He saw it disappear
and come into his vision again. He saw it speed and vanish along a
triangular slab of steel, downwards into the invisible intricacies that
took it and folded it into two and four and eight pages, cut it and
patted it into shape, and tossed it out, quire after quire, a living,
printed thing--_The Day_.
And everywhere, wherever he glanced at the turbulent, roaring machines,
little screws were working, silent wheels were spinning, small, thin
rods were moving almost imperceptibly to and fro, to and fro. He saw
great rollers touching the gutters of ink, transmitting their inky
touch to other rollers, spinning round and round and round; and the
paper, speeding through it all, from the great white web to the folded
sheets that were snatched up by waiting men and bundled into a lift,
upwards into the night where the carts were waiting.
And the force of the noise was dreadful, and the power of the machines
perpetual and relentless as they flung from them, with such terrible
ease, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of square, folded papers.
They looked as if they could crush the lives of men in the swift snare
of their machinery.
VI
Whom should he meet one day, but Beaver!
Beaver of the inky thumbs and the bitten nails, who had, somehow,
eluded him, though they both worked in the narrow Street. Nothing
astonishing in this, for the work of Beaver lay in circles different
from his own. He never came outside the radius of meetings, inquests,
the opening of bazaars and the hundred and one minor happenings that
are to be found in "To-day's Diary." But here he was, utterly unchanged
from the Beaver with whom Humphrey had lived in Guilford Street, with
Mrs Wayzgoose, her wasteful coal-scuttles and her bulrushes.
They met in a chop-house by Temple Bar, a strange place, where the
lower floor was packed with keen-faced men from the Courts of Justice
over the way and the Temple at the back. They sat crowded together,
abandoning all comfort in the haste to enjoy the luxury of the chops
and steaks for which the house was famed.
There were no table-cloths on the round tables, where coffee-cups and
plates of poached eggs and rounds of toast jostled each other. Only
in England would people sit with joy and eat cheek by jowl in this
fashion, with the smell of coffee and hot food in their nostrils, and
the clatter of plates and knives and forks in their ears.
Upstairs men played chess and dominoes over coffee and rolls, cracking
their boiled eggs with difficulty in the cramped space.
Humphrey heard a voice hail him as he threaded his way between the
tables. He looked back and saw Beaver waving a friendly fork at him.
"Hullo!" cried Beaver, shifting his chair away a few inches, and
seriously incommoding a grey-haired man so absorbed in his game of
chess that his coffee was cold and untouched. "Come and sit here,"
cried Beaver.
They shook hands. "Well, how goes it?" Humphrey asked. "Still with the
nose to the grindstone?"
"That's it," Beaver said. Their positions had been changed since the
days of Easterham, when Beaver seemed miles above him in worldly
success. He remembered the day Beaver left for London, to embark on
a career which shone clear and brilliant in Humphrey's imagination.
"Write in!" Those had been Beaver's last words. "Write in. That's what
I did." The vision of it all rose before him now, as he sat by Beaver:
the dingy office, with the scent of the fishmonger next door, the
auctioneer's bills on the walls, with samples of mourning and wedding
cards, and tradesmen's invoice headings, to show the excellence of the
_Gazette's_ jobbing department. And now--? He was conscious of a change
in Beaver's attitude towards him.
Humphrey had taken his place in Fleet Street among the personalities,
among the young men of promise and achievement. He had even seen his
name signed to occasional articles in _The Day_--glorious thrill,
splendid emotion, that repaid all the long anonymous hours of patient
work!
"You're getting on!" Beaver said. There was admiration unconcealed in
his eyes and voice. "Great Scott! It seems impossible that you and I
ever worked together on that rotten Easterham paper. That was a fine
story you did of the Hextable Railway Smash."
"I've got nothing to complain of," Humphrey replied, hacking at a roll
of bread. "It hasn't been easy work. Yours isn't, for the matter of
that."
Beaver laughed. "Oh, mine--it isn't difficult, you know. I get so used
to it, that I can report a speech mechanically without even thinking of
the speaker."
"It's a safe job, you know," he said, after a pause. "A life job."
Humphrey knew what Beaver's exultation in the safety of his job meant.
There were men in Fleet Street, husbands of wives, and fathers of
families, who lived and worked tremblingly from day to day, never
certain when a fatal envelope would not contain the irrevocable
"regret" of the editor that he could no longer continue the engagement.
Why, it might happen to Humphrey himself, for aught he knew. Truly,
Beaver was to be envied after all.
"But don't you think you'd do better on a daily paper?" Humphrey said.
"I could tell Rivers about you, you know. There might be room on _The
Day_."
"I'm taking no risks. I'm going to stop where I am. You see--er--"
Beaver became suddenly hesitant, and smiled foolishly. "What I mean to
say is--I'm engaged to be married."
He leant back in his seat and contemplated the astonishment in
Humphrey's face.
"No--are you really!"
"Fact," retorted Beaver. "Been engaged for the last year."
Beaver going to be married! The news touched Humphrey oddly: Beaver
could be earning very little more than Humphrey had earned at the time
when he had almost plunged into married life, and there was no desire
on Beaver's part to reach out and grasp greater things; he was in a
life job, untouched by the wrack and torment of ambition, and the
craving for success. Oh, assuredly, Beaver was not to be pitied in the
equable calmness of his life and temperament.
"Well, I congratulate you, old man--though I never thought you were the
marrying sort."
Beaver took the congratulations blushingly. "Nor did I, until I met
Her."
He spoke of "Her" in an awed, impressive manner, as though She were
some abnormal person far removed from all other people in the world.
Humphrey tried to figure the girl whom Beaver had chosen. He thought of
her as a rather plain, nice homely sort of person, with no great burden
of intellect or imagination.
Beaver's hand dived into an inside pocket, and out came a leather case.
This he opened, and displayed a photograph, reverently.
"That's her!" he said, showing the portrait.
Humphrey kept his self-possession well. Neither by a look nor a word
did he betray the past: there was nothing in his manner to show Beaver
that the girl whose portrait he held in his hand was she whose lips had
clung to his in the young, passionate kisses of yester-year.
But, as Humphrey looked on the face of Lilian Filmer, the same Lilian,
even though the photograph was new, and the hair was done in a
different fashion, an acute feeling of sorrow came over him, bringing
with it the remembrance of aching days, of the early beginnings, of
those meetings and partings, and hearts that strained, and he saw the
reflection of himself, foolish and cruel, mistaking the shadow for the
substance, struggling and struggling, all for nothing ... for not even
as much as Beaver had gained.
She looked at him out of the eyes of her photograph, and about her lips
there still hovered that smile which had always been a riddle to him; a
smile of indulgent love, or contempt? Who knows--a woman's smile is the
secret of her sex. Yet now, it seemed, her lips were curved in triumph.
This was her revenge on him, that he should go for ever loveless
through the world, while she should steal into a haven of welcome peace.
Beaver's voice brought him back to physical things. She would kiss
Beaver's shaggy-moustached lips, and his arms would catch her in an
embrace.... How soon she had forgotten ... he thought, unreasonably....
She might have waited.... She might have understood....
"Well?" said Beaver, awaiting praise. "You've had a good old look."
"She's awfully nice and charming," Humphrey answered, returning the
photograph. "She's like somebody I know."
"Oh, you've probably seen the original, old man, when you used to come
and call for me. She used to be one of the girls in our office."
He had forgotten that lunch in the Fleet Street public-house, when
Humphrey had asked for the name of the girl.
Used to be one of the girls in the office! Then Lilian had left.
He wondered what she was doing, and an impulse that could not be
withstood, compelled him to find out whether she had ever mentioned him
to Beaver.
"By George!" he said. "I remember, now. Miss Filmer, her name was,
wasn't it?"
"That's it, Miss Filmer. Did you ever speak to her, then?"
He was treading on uncertain ground. It was clear that she had never
spoken of him. He felt that she had forgotten him, absolutely and
completely.
"Oh, I think so--just casually, now and again."
"Well, I never!" said the innocent Beaver. "That's interesting. I'll
tell her I met you."
"Oh, she wouldn't remember me or my name," Humphrey answered, hastily.
"It was only just 'How-d'ye-do' and 'Good-day' with us.... So she's
left the office now."
"Yes. It's rather a sad story. Her father died, you know. He was a
chronic invalid--paralysis, I think. Anyhow, we don't speak of it
much, and I've never pressed her. But the father who was so useless in
life, has been the salvation of the mother by his death. Odd, isn't
it? He was insured for a good round sum, and Lilian's mother--did I
tell you her name was Lilian?--has bought a little annuity, so that
Lilian's free. She used to slave for her mother and the rest of the
family until they grew up. That's why she worked overtime at the
office. 'Pon me soul, I'd rather be the lowest jackal in Fleet Street
than some of these poor little typist girls at eighteen bob a week....
Well, time's up. I've got to be at the Mansion House at three: the Lord
Mayor's taking the chair at some blooming meeting to raise a fund for
something, somewhere. What are you doing to-day?"
"Oh, I'm on the Klipp case at the Old Bailey."
Humphrey came away profoundly disturbed. Something entirely unexpected
had happened. Lilian had lived as the vaguest shadow at the back of his
mind, just as he had last seen her, when she bent down to kiss him, and
now this picture would have to be erased. He shuddered at the thought.
She was Beaver's "girl": she would be Beaver's "missis."
After all, what did it matter? He and Lilian had long since parted;
there had been little in common between them. He might have married
her, and been as Beaver; she might have married him, but never, never,
could she have held the magic and the inspiration of Elizabeth Carr.
His mind, always susceptible to outside influences, brooded on the new
fact that had come into his life. Unconsciously, as a natural sequel
to his thoughts, he began to dream of his new love, and to see himself
happier than he had ever been, with Elizabeth for ever at his side.
The same motives that impelled him to Lilian after that scene in the
registry office, when Wratten was married, now urged him towards
Kenneth Carr's sister....
And, of course, one day, Beaver would have to mention his name to
Lilian. She would probably smile and say nothing. "He's engaged now,"
Beaver would say. "There won't be any bachelors left, soon." And that
would be his message to Lilian.
VII
On a Saturday evening some weeks later, Humphrey sat in the dismantled
room in Clifford's Inn, in which he and Kenneth Carr had shared so many
hours of grateful friendship.
The room looked forlorn enough. Square gaping patches on the wall
marked the places where pictures had once hung; the windows were bared
of curtains and the floor was dismal without the carpet, littered with
scraps of paper and little pieces of destroyed letters. Trunks and
boxes ready for the leaving were in the small entrance hall, now robbed
of its curtains and its comfort. A pair of old boots, a broken pipe,
a row of empty bottles and siphons, a chipped cup or two--these alone
formed the salvage which the room would rescue from Kenneth's presence.
"This," said Kenneth, taking the pipe-rack from the mantelpiece, "this,
my son, I give and bequeath to you." He laughed, and tossed it over to
Humphrey, who caught it neatly.
Kenneth waved his arm comprehensively round the room. "Now if there's
any other little thing you fancy," he said, "take your choice. I'm
afraid there's nothing but old boots and broken glass left. You might
fancy a bottle or two for candlesticks."
"The only thing of yours I coveted was your green edition of Thackeray,
and you took jolly good care to pack that before I came," Humphrey
remarked.
"I'll send you one for your next birthday. I shall be rolling in money
when I get to work. Meanwhile, just hold this lid up, while I put these
photographs in."
The light glinted on the silver of the frames. Humphrey knew nothing
of two of them, but the third was a photograph that he had always
observed. He could see it now as it lay, face upwards, in Kenneth's
hand--the photograph of Elizabeth, very sweet and beautiful, with soft
eyes that seemed to be full of infinite regret.
"Do you know, old man," he said, "I wish you'd let me have that
photograph."
"Which one?"
"The one of Elizabeth." Closer acquaintance had led to the dropping of
the formal "Miss" and "Mister."
"What will Elizabeth say: it was a special and exclusive birthday
present to me, frame and all."
"You can easily get another one. Keep the frame if you want to. Honest,
I'd like to have the photograph. It would remind me of you and all the
jolly talks we've had."
"Best Beloved," laughed Kenneth, jovially, "I can refuse you nothing.
It is yours, with half my kingdom." He slipped the photograph from
the frame. "You know, I feel exhilarated at the thought of leaving it
all. I walk on air. I am free." He slammed the lid on the last box and
pirouetted across the room.
"Thanks," said Humphrey, placing the photograph in his letter-case.
"Think of it," Kenneth cried, "from to-morrow I'm a free man--free to
write as I will: free to say at such and such a time, 'Now I shall
have luncheon,' 'Now I shall have dinner,' or, 'Now I will go to bed.'
Free to say, 'To-morrow week at three-thirty I shall do such and such
a thing,' in the sure and certain knowledge that I shall be able to do
it. Henceforth, I am the captain of my soul."
"Oh yes, you feel pretty chirpy now, but just you wait. You wait
till there's a big story on, and you read all the other fellows'
stories--you'll start guessing who did this one, or who got that
scoop--and you'll wish you were back again."
"Not I! I shall sit in the seclusion of my arm-chair, and gloat over it
all the next morning. And I shall think, 'Poor devils, they're still
at it--and all that they think so splendid to-day will be forgotten by
to-morrow.' I've had my fill of Fleet Street.... Besides, I don't quite
break with it."
"Why?"
"Didn't I tell you? Old Macalister of _The Herald_ is a brick. He's the
literary editor, you know, a regular spider in a web of books. He's put
me on the reviewers' list, so you'll see my work in the literary page
of _The Herald_. And it's another guinea or so."
"Good old Macalister," Humphrey said. "The literary editors are the
only people who give us a little sympathy sometimes. I believe that
whenever they see a reporter they say: 'There, but for the grace of
God, go I.'"
Kenneth surveyed the room. "There," he said, brushing the dust of
packing from him. "It's finished. In an hour I shall be gone."
"What train are you catching?"
"The eight-twenty. I shall be in the West Country two hours later, and
a trap will be waiting to take me to my cottage. You should see it, old
man--just three rooms, low ceilings and oaken beams, and a door that is
sunk two steps below the roadway. Five bob a week, and all mine for a
year. There's a room for you when you come."
"Sounds jolly enough!..." Humphrey sighed. "By George, I shall miss you
when you've gone, Kenneth," he said. "There'll only be Willoughby left.
It's funny how few real, social friendships there are in the Street,
isn't it? Fellows know each other and all that, and feed together, but
they always keep their private family lives apart...."
"I'll tell you a secret if you promise not to crow. I _am_ sorry
to leave. I'm pretending to be light-hearted and gay, as a sort of
rehearsal for Elizabeth--she'll be here soon--but, really and truly, I
feel as if I were leaving part of myself behind in Fleet Street. Say
something ludicrous, Humphrey; be ridiculous and save me from becoming
mawkish over the parting."
"I can't," Humphrey admitted miserably. "It gives me the hump to sit in
this bare room, and to think of all the talks we've had--"
"You've got to come here on Monday again, and see that Carter Paterson
takes away the big box."
"I shall send a boy from the office: I won't set foot in the room
again.... Wonder who'll live here next?" he added inconsequently.
"Donno," Kenneth replied, absently looking at his watch. "They're not
bad rooms for the price. I say, it's time Elizabeth were here."
Their talk drifted aimlessly to and fro for the next quarter of an
hour. They had already said everything they had to say on the subject
of the journey. A feeling of depression and loneliness stole over
Humphrey: his mind travelled to the days of his friendship with
Wratten, and he was experiencing once more the sharp sense of loss that
he had experienced when Wratten died.
There came a knock at the door, and Elizabeth appeared, bringing with
her, as she always did, an atmosphere of gladness and peace. Her
beautiful face, in the shadows of her large brimmed hat, her brilliant
eyes, and the supple grace of her figure elated him: he came forward to
greet her gaily. Sorrow could not live in her presence.
"I'm sorry I'm late," she said. "But I've kept the cab waiting....
Well, have you two said your sobbing farewells?"
Kenneth kissed her. "Don't make a joke of the sacred moments ... we
were on the verge of a tearful breakdown. My tears spring from the fact
that he has given me no parting gift."
"Good Lord! I forgot all about it." Humphrey produced from his pocket a
small brown-paper parcel. "It's a pipe--smoke it, and see in the smoke
visions of Fleet Street."
"Well, I'm hanged!" said Kenneth, conjuring up a similar parcel;
"that's just what I bought for you. A five-and-sixpenny one, too."
"Then I've lost," Humphrey said, with mock gloom. "Mine cost
six-and-six. He'll have to pay the cab, Elizabeth, won't he?"
"If you two are going to stand there talking nonsense Kenneth will miss
the train. Come along! I'll carry the little bag. Can you both manage
the big one?"
Both of them cunningly kept up their artificially high spirits. Even
when Kenneth switched off the electric light, and the room was in
darkness, except for a pallid moonbeam that accentuated the bareness of
the floor and walls, they parodied their own feelings. They were both a
little ashamed of the sentimental that was in them.
But as the cab drove out of Fleet Street, they were silent. The lights
were flaming in the upper rooms, but the offices of _The Herald_ and
_The Day_ and the rest of the large dailies were unlit and silent, for
Sunday gave peace to them on Saturday night. But Fleet Street itself
was still alive, and the offices of the Sunday papers were active, and
the noise of the presses, without which no day passes in the Street,
would soon be heard....
Half an hour later, under the great glass roof of Paddington Station,
the last farewells had been said.
Nothing but a "So long, old man," and a "Good-bye" and a tight
handshake marked the breaking of another thread of friendship. Humphrey
watched the train curve outwards and away into the darkness with that
queer emotion that always comes when one is left standing on a railway
platform, and a lighted train has moved out, full of life behind its
lit windows, leaving in its place a glistening, empty stretch of rails.
Elizabeth was fluttering a valedictory handkerchief to the shadows.
Humphrey touched her arm gently.
"Shall we go now?" he said.
"I suppose we'd better." These were awkward, uneasy moments. He would
have liked to have told her how much he felt the passing of Kenneth,
but he was afraid of hurting her, for he knew that she, too, was
saddened at his departure.
"You'll let me see you home, won't you?" he asked.
"Would you? Thanks, so much."
They passed out of the station, and he called a hansom. His hand held
her arm firmly as he helped her into the cab. She thanked him with her
eyes. The moment was precious. It seemed that he had taken Kenneth's
place; that, henceforth, she would look to him for protection.
They rode in silence through the lamp-lit terraces, where the white
houses stood tall and ghostly, flinging their shadows across the road.
There was nothing for him to say. He knew that their thoughts were
running in the same groove. The sudden clear ray of a lamp flashed
intermittently as the cab came into the range of its light, and he
could see her face, serene, thoughtful, and very beautiful. It made him
think of the photograph that lay in his pocket, against his heart....
She was very close to him, closer than she had ever been before, so
close that he had but to put out his arms and draw her lips to his.
Never again, he thought, would she be as close to him as she was at
this moment. And the memory of Lilian intruded ... and with the memory
came a vision of just such a ride homewards in a hansom.... Ah, but
Elizabeth was of a finer fibre,--a higher being altogether. His body
tingled at his thoughts. His imagination ran riot in the long silence,
and he did not seek to check it.
He was seized by an indefinite impulse to hazard all his future in the
rashness of a moment, to take her and kiss her, and tell her that he
loved her.
"Here we are," she said, with a sudden movement as the cab jolted to a
standstill.
He sighed. How calm and remote she seemed from love.
"You must come in for a moment and have something."
He hesitated from conventional politeness.
"The drive has been cold," she said. "I will ask Ellen to mix you a
whisky and soda; and I daresay she's left some sandwiches for us."
"For us!" There was an inestimable touch of intimacy about those words.
"Thanks," he said (was his voice really as strange and as husky as it
sounded to his ears?) "Thanks--if I won't be keeping you up."
Again, that suggestion of close acquaintance and absolute familiarity,
as she let herself and him into the house with her latchkey, and closed
the door softly on the world outside. It was all nothing to her. She
moved about with perfect self-possession, unaware of the agitation
within him.
"Let me turn up the light," she said, leading the way into the
sitting-room.
He stumbled against something in the feeble light.
"Mind," she cried, laughingly. "Don't knock my treasures over."
And then, suddenly, the room was in utter darkness.
He heard her make an impatient murmur of annoyance. "There! I've turned
it the wrong way.... Don't move ... I know where the matches are."
He heard the rustle of her dress, and her breathing, and the faint
fragrance of her pervaded the darkness. He stood there in the black
room with the blood surging in his veins, and pulses that seemed to
be hammering against the silence. He could feel the throbbing of his
temples. She moved about the room, and once she came near to him, so
near that her hair seemed to float across his face with a caress that
was soft and silken ... clearly in his brain he pictured her, smiling,
pure and beautiful ... this darkness was becoming intolerable. He made
a step towards her....
And the room was lit with a brightness that blurred his sight with
the sudden transition from darkness. He saw her standing by the
gas-bracket, with a look of concern on her face.
"Humphrey!" she cried, "is anything the matter with you?"
He was standing in a direct line with the oval mirror on the wall, and
he caught the glimpse of a white face, with straining eyes and blanched
lips, that he scarcely recognized as his own. She came to his side,
tenderly solicitous.
He could bear it no longer. The words came from him in faltering
sentences.
"Elizabeth," he cried. "Don't you know ... I love you, I love you."
Her face flushed with perfect beauty.
"Oh--Humphrey ..." she said.
And by the intimation of her voice, half-reproachful, and yet charged
with infinite pity and love, he knew that, if he were bold enough, he
could take her and hold her for evermore.
"I love you.... I love you ..." he said, drawing her unresistingly
towards him. And there was nothing in life comparable to the exquisite
happiness of that miraculous moment when her lips met his.
VIII
He seemed to have reached out and touched the very summit of life in
that swift moment of supreme excellence. His whole being vibrated with
the splendour of living. He felt as he had felt that night when those
three grand chords struck by Dyotkin had stirred the depths of his
soul....
And then his moment faded away into the irrevocable past, as she
disengaged herself with a gentle, graceful movement, and they stood
facing each other in silence. He saw her eyes, inexpressibly mild and
soft, droop downwards, as she bent her head; he marked the colour
mounting up her cheeks, flushing faintly the whiteness of her neck, and
her fingers straying nervously in the thin, golden loop of the chain
that fell across her bosom.
The wonder of his emotions dazed him. All that he could realize was
that, in the space of a second, their relations had been absolutely
changed. Henceforth, she appeared to him in another aspect. Quite
suddenly and swiftly they had become isolated from all the countless
millions in the world by the sorcery of a kiss. It seemed unreal and
absurd to him. He wanted to laugh.
"You had better sit down," she said in a low voice, that had a note of
appeal in it. "I hear Ellen coming.... It will not do to let her notice
anything...."
Astonishing, he thought, how tranquil and undisturbed she could remain.
She could talk to Ellen as if nothing at all had happened; she could
hand him sandwiches and prattle about little things as long as Ellen
was in the room, and even when the door closed on Ellen she seemed
loath to let him speak.
But he stopped her, emboldened by the privilege of his love. He went
over to her and, placing his hands on each side of her face, drew her
forehead towards his kiss, and looked at her with sparkling, victorious
eyes.
"You have made me happier than I have ever been," he said. "I will be
very grateful and good to you."
Her eyes met his searchingly. "You will, really?" she asked.
"Really," he said, and he kissed her again.
Now they could talk--he had so much to say. With her acceptance of his
pledge, her smiling "Really," and his reply, he became normal again.
His thoughts descended from their eminence and came back to their
matter-of-fact, everyday plane.
"Tell me," he said, with a lover's vanity, "when did you first know
that I loved you?"
"I don't know ..." she said. "Perhaps to-night."
"Only to-night!" he echoed, disappointed. "Oh, I have loved you long
before this. I think it began when we went to the forest together that
day with the children.... I shall be able to help you with your work,"
he cried, buoyantly, "or will you drop it now?"
She laughed merrily. "How you hurry things on!" she said. "Give me time
to think, like a good boy. We're not going to be married to-morrow, are
we?"
"No ... no," he protested, "I didn't mean that. Let's have a really
long, lovely engagement. Give me months in which I can do all sorts
of things for you; we'll see things together that I've never seen
before--museums and picture-galleries. Do you know, there's hundreds of
things in London I've never seen."
"Why not?"
"I put off the seeing until I go there with my love."
The consummate joy of the hour infected him. He walked up and down the
room promising great things ... vanity and egotism tinged his talk.
"I shall get on, you know. I shall do something great in Fleet Street,
one day. There's no knowing where I shall stop. And then there are the
books I mean to write. Oh yes! Kenneth's sown the seeds of book-writing
in me. And plays ... plays are the things to make money with...."
"You won't need money," she said, kindly. "I have enough for both of
us."
"Dearest," he answered. (It seemed the most natural thing in the world,
now, that he should call her "dearest.") "You must not say that.... You
won't mind waiting, just a little, will you? Until I feel I can come to
you and say that I do not need your money.... I can't explain it ... I
should never be happy if I took a penny from you."
She took his hand and caressed it. "I like you all the better for that,
Humphrey." (He noticed that she did not use the word "love.")
He saw the future splendid, and roseate. He thought, with a smile, of
Ferrol. Ferrol could not check him now. He had made his own identity,
he was conscious of his own will to achieve that which he set out to
do. Besides, there was such a difference between Lilian and Elizabeth.
He emerged from the house, a new being in a new world, living in the
amazement of the last hour.
IX
It seemed strange to him that, with such a change in his life, the old
work should proceed unaltered: he stood in Rivers' room, listening
to Rivers' talk and banter as the news-editor gave him his work to
do; he came before Selsey at night, copy in hand; he mingled with the
reporters in their big, bare room, talking of the day's paper, and
discussing their jobs and their troubles with them; he came into that
close, personal contact with men whom he knew, and men who knew him,
and yet there was always an abyss that divided his two lives.
So it was with all of them: in their friendship they seemed to say,
"Thus far shalt thou go, and no further"; their homes, their private
sorrows and eager hopes, the real lives that they lived, in fact, were
left behind them with the closing of their house-door, and they came to
the office different beings.
Those matters that touched their innermost lives were never discussed.
Occasionally, the birth of a baby in the home of a reporter or a
sub-editor would bring a queer suggestion of humanity and ordinary life
into their affairs: sometimes, the news would filter through of a wife
seriously ill in some home at Herne Hill or Wimbledon, and there were
solicitous inquiries (Ferrol would send down the greatest specialist in
one of those deep, generous moods of his), for the rest they displayed
no interest in each other's private affairs.
As a matter of fact, it was assumed, by the law of the Street, that
they had no private lives of their own. It is impossible to imagine
Humphrey saying: "If you please, I am engaged to be married, may I
have the evening off," if at seven in the evening anything from a fire
at the docks to the kidnapping of a baby occurred.
Therefore he told no one of the new wonder that had come into his life,
not even Tommy Pride, who, by the way, had of late taken to sending
out for a glass of whisky and soda, and doing his work with the glass
before him on the table. They looked at each other in the reporters'
room, and sighed, "Poor old Tommy."
Least of all would he tell Ferrol. He would have liked to have gone
to Ferrol, and told him, but he remembered Ferrol's outburst. He was
older now, and he could not trust himself to listen calmly to the old
arguments. And he felt that it would be a slur on Elizabeth if he were
forced to plead the cause of his marriage....
So the days followed each other, and he was happy with that mixed
happiness which is, perhaps, the most perfect. After the first great
moment when he had declared his love, their relations had fallen back
to their original groove. It was safer thus: one could not live always
on the exalted plane of that moment.
His love-affair with Elizabeth Carr was of a different calibre from
that with Lilian. It was truer, and rested on a firmer basis of
friendship, but it lacked the ardour, and the passionate moments and
kisses of the days when love held the ascendancy over his work....
Once, when he was moved with most eager desire during one of their
lonely meetings, he caught her to him, and kissed her, and he was
conscious of an unspoken reproach in her lips and eyes, that took from
him, for the moment, all the savour of his love.
It seemed to him that he was most successful when he was not playing
the lover, when they met just as if they were rather exceptional
friends instead of betrothed, and this irked him from time to time. He
wanted to love, and be loved, he wanted to give all and take all. But
when, in those rare moods, she answered his kisses recklessly, she was
splendidly beautiful and magnificent, atoning lavishly for all that she
had withheld from him.
In one thing this wooing ran parallel with the wooing of Lilian: there
were the same interruptions and postponement of plans; Fleet Street
for ever intruded, and always there was the remorseless, inexorable
conflict between his love and his career.
After an unfortunate week of shattered plans for spending an evening
together, she sighed impatiently. "I wish you would give up Fleet
Street," she said. "You could do better work."
"Oh!" he said, light-heartedly, "one day I will. I'll sit down and
write my book. But it's too soon yet."
She looked at him with doubt in her eyes. She seemed to be feeling her
way through the dark corridors of his mind.
"But surely you don't like the work," she said.
He laughed. "Some days I don't, and some days I do. Some days I think
it loathsome, and some days I think it glorious.... We're all like
that."
* * * * *
A day came when he thought it glorious, when Fleet Street gave him of
its best, a swift reward for his allegiance.
He was in the reporters' room one evening, talking the latest office
gossip with Jamieson and Willoughby, which concerned the marriage of
_The Day's_ Miss Minger, with young Hartopp of _The Gazette_. It was an
event in Fleet Street, marking, in its way, the end of the epoch of the
woman reporter.
"I don't think a reporters' room is a fit place for a woman,"
Willoughby said. "They're all right for their special work--cooking and
dress and weddings, and all that--but hard, right-down chasing after
stories is man's work."
"I didn't mind Miss Minger," remarked Humphrey. "She was a jolly good
sport, but women have us at a disadvantage. Remember that time when
we all fell down on the gun-running story at Harwich, and Miss Minger
sailed in, smiled her prettiest, and squeezed a scoop out of them."
"Ah, well," Jamieson said. "They're all the same ... marriage, you
know, and a happy home, with jolly children. They soon find out that
it's better to let hubby do the reporting.... Hullo, young man Trinder,
what do you want?" he said, breaking off as the pink-faced secretary
stood in the doorway.
"_You're_ wanted," Trinder said, nodding to Humphrey.
"Me!" said Humphrey. "What's up?"
"Ferrol wants you."
"My word!" said Willoughby. "Are you going to be sacked, or is your
salary to be raised?"
"Our blessings on you," cried Jamieson, as he followed Trinder out of
the room, upstairs, and along the corridor to Ferrol's door.
Ferrol stood with his hat and coat on waiting for him.
"Oh, Quain," he said, shortly. "Get your things and come along. I want
to talk to you."
Humphrey paused, bewildered. "Hurry up," said Ferrol. He took his watch
from his pocket, glanced at it, and clicked its case hurriedly. "I've
got to be back here at ten."
"Very well, sir," said Humphrey. He ran back to the reporters' room,
and gathered together his hat and his coat and his stick.
"What's up?" chorused Jamieson and Willoughby.
"Lord knows!" he gasped. "_He_ wants me to go somewhere or the other
with him."
"Most certainly you are either going to be sacked or have your salary
raised," remarked Willoughby. "But if you are going to be made editor,
be kind to us when you are all-powerful."
"Ass!" laughed Humphrey, in reply.
He went back. Ferrol made a noise of satisfaction, and led the way out
of his room, carefully switching off the lights. Down the stairs they
went, side by side, Humphrey walking beside the mighty Ferrol, just as
he did in his dreams. Down the stairs they went, and the men coming
up--his colleagues--raised their hats to Ferrol, for they always gave
him respect, and the heart of him throbbed with the strangeness of it
all.
The commissionaire saluted stiffly, and gazed at Humphrey with a new
esteem. A small boy in uniform darted with haste before them, and
opened the door of a limousine car, reflecting the lights of the night
in its lacquered brilliance. The chauffeur touched the polished peak of
his hat. It seemed that everybody paid homage to Ferrol, greatest of
all men in the eyes of Humphrey Quain.
For this man was the symbol, the personification of the Street and the
paper for which he had worked with all his heart, with all his might,
and with all his soul.
He stood aside to let Ferrol step into the car first, but Ferrol, with
a smile, urged him into the lighted interior. He received an impression
of superlative comfort and riches in that small, blue-lined room with
its little electric lamp overhead. There were rugs of deliciously
soft camel-hair, and, as he settled in the yielding cushions, his
outstretched feet struck something hard, that gave warmth instantly,
even through the leather of his boots. A silver cone-shaped holder,
filled with red roses, confronted him; their very scent suggested ease
and luxury. There were touches of silver everywhere: an ash-tray at his
right hand, a whistle attached to a speaking tube, and a row of books
in a silver case--an A B C Railway Guide, a diary, an address book,
and a postal guide. They gave the Ferrol touch of concentrated energy,
even in these surroundings of comfortable, upholstered rest.
The car sped along with a soft movement, almost noiseless, except for
the low purring of its engines. Through the windows, past the strong
face of Ferrol, he caught glimpses of a wet world with people walking
upon their own reflections in the glistening pavements, of ragged
beggars slouching along with hunched-up shoulders, of streaming crowds
passing and repassing, ignoring entirely the passage of this splendid,
immaculate room on wheels, never questioning the right of those people
within it to the shelter which was denied to them.
And he felt extraordinarily remote from all these people: an odd thrill
of contempt for them moved him to think: "What fools they are not to
get cars for themselves." It was as if he had been suddenly translated
to another world: a world inhabited by a superior race of men and
women, almost god-like in the power of their possessions, who looked
down on other struggling mortals from their exalted plane, with a
vision blurred by warmth and security.
The silence enchanted him. If Ferrol had spoken, the spell of that
journey would have been snapped. The silence enabled him to enjoy
to the full the extraordinary sensation of being whirled along in
the darkness by the side of Ferrol towards some unknown destiny. The
discipline had made him always regard Ferrol with awe; but now, as he
sat wrapped in the warm rugs of the motor-car, the social barriers
dropped. He wondered why Ferrol was doing this.
The speed of the car slackened gradually. He caught a glimpse of
railings and the lights shining among the trees, bringing back to him
the old memories of his first impression of the park. But they were on
the Kensington side, and the breadth of the park from Bayswater to
Kensington made all the difference. Here there seemed to be a culture
and dignity in the very houses themselves: they did not suggest the
overbearing, self-made prosperity of that broad road that ran parallel
with it on the other side of the trees and meadows.
A servant stood by the open door of the car. His face was implacably
dignified. His white shirt-front and tie were splendidly correct for
his station, in that he wore three obvious bone studs and a black tie.
He held the door of the house open, and Humphrey followed Ferrol inside.
He had been to many houses such as this as a reporter, when he had
waited with a sense of social inferiority in halls hung with old
masters, and furnished with rare old oak ... at those times the
servants had treated him with a mixture of deference and contempt. But
this was different: respectful, eager hands relieved him of his coat
and hat; vaguely he knew he had to follow one of the owners of these
hands up a broad staircase, along a soft carpeted passage, to a room
which, suddenly flooded with light, showed its possession of a basin
fitted with shining silver taps. He washed luxuriously; the towels were
warm to the touch. He felt at peace with the world.
Down the stairs again, with a portrait on the white panelled wall for
each step, to the inner hall lined with tapestries and brocade, where
a bronze statue held an electric torch aloft to light the way to the
dining-room.
Ferrol was standing by the fire. "Chilly to-night," he said, as
Humphrey came into the room. His voice echoed in the spacious
loneliness of the room.
"Yes," said Humphrey, "it is." He hesitated a moment, and then added
"sir." It seemed the correct thing to do, though Ferrol and he might
have been, for all that had happened in the last half-hour, excellent
personal friends, of equal status in the world.
"Come and warm yourself," said Ferrol, motioning him to a high-backed
chair by the fire. Humphrey sat down, and put his hands to the fire.
This room with its bright lights and its high ceiling filled him with a
realization of his own comparative poverty. The walls, again, reflected
the artistic in Ferrol.
His glance wandered to the table. Dishes of delicacies in aspic and
mayonnaise gave colour to the white glitter of glass and silver. A bowl
of great chrysanthemums rose out of the centre-piece of crystal, whose
lower tiers were crowded with peaches, apricots, green figs, grapes,
and other exotic fruits....
A whimsical vision came to him of a sausage-shop in Fleet Street where,
often, kept late on a job, without opportunity for dinner, he had sat
on a high stool at the counter eating sausages and onions and potatoes
as they came hot from the sizzling trays of fat in the window. The
thought made him smile.
"What's the joke?" asked Ferrol, smiling too.
Humphrey went a diffident pink. After all, why shouldn't he tell
Ferrol? He was quite right: the great man bubbled with laughter. He saw
the ingenuousness of the thought. It endeared Humphrey to him.
"Ah, young man," he said, "I know that shop."
Humphrey's eyebrows raised.
"I've passed it many a time and seen the inviting sausages. By God!"
he continued, bringing his fist down on the mantelpiece, "I'd give you
everything on the table, every night of your life, if I could go in and
sit at the counter and eat them." He laughed. "So don't you be in too
much of a hurry to give up sausages."
A servant appeared, bearing a silver soup-tureen. Ferrol sat at the
top of the table, and Humphrey took the seat at his right hand. The
soup was clear and delicious, possessing a faint, elusive flavour of
sherry. While he was eating, he became aware of the butler pouring
light-coloured wine into a high stemmed glass. He looked up and saw
Ferrol regarding his wine glass.
"It's all I drink," said Ferrol. "A little hock with dinner. In my day,
many a fellow was ruined with too much drink. Are they as bad now?" he
asked.
It was a strange experience to have Ferrol question him on the doings
of the Street.
"Oh no!" he said, hastily, "there's not much of that now. Perhaps a
half dozen or so here and there, but nothing serious." (But he thought
of the shaking hand of Tommy Pride as he spoke.)
"None of my men drink, eh?" Ferrol said. It was more of an assertion
than a query. "Do you know we've got the finest staff in London--in
England."
During the whole of that delightful dinner Humphrey listened to Ferrol
talking about the men with whom he worked. He knew them all: knew all
that they had done, and all that they were capable of doing. He asked
Humphrey's opinion on this man and that man, and listened attentively
to the reply. Sometimes Humphrey made a joke, and Ferrol laughed.
And, as the dinner progressed, and the clear, cold wine invigorated his
mind and warmed his perceptions, he conceived a greater liking for this
man, who was so human at the core of him. In the office one saw him
with the distorted, disciplined view, as an unapproachable demi-god,
surrounded by people who sacrificed his name to their own advancement.
Ah! if one could always be on these terms of privileged intimacy with
him, what a difference it would make in the work. If one dared tell
Ferrol of the obstacles and the petty humiliations that obscured the
path to good work for the sake of the paper....
"Tell me," said Ferrol, suddenly, pushing bunches of black grapes
towards him--"tell me about Easterham, and your life there."
Now, what could there be in Easterham and its monotonous life to
interest Ferrol, thought Humphrey.
Nevertheless, he told him of Easterham, and the _Easterham Gazette_ on
which he had worked. That amused Ferrol vastly. And he had to answer
oddly insistent questions--to describe the Market Square, and the
Cathedral close, with its rooks and ivy. It astonished him to find how
interested Ferrol was in these little things, and almost before he was
aware of it, he found himself speaking of personal matters, of things
that touched his own inner, private life, of his aunt (with her stern
gospel of "Getting On"), of the mother whom he did not remember, and of
Daniel Quain, his father.
And as he talked on, he saw suddenly that Ferrol was listening in a
detached manner, and it occurred to him that he had rather overstepped
the limits of a reply to a polite inquiry. He became confused and shy.
His reminiscences withered within him. Ferrol tried to urge him along
the old track.
"He's only doing it out of politeness," thought Humphrey. "I shan't
tell him any more. He's making fun of me."
He cracked walnuts in silence and sipped at the port. (Ferrol touched
neither nuts nor wine.) He did not interpret that air of detached
interest with which Ferrol had listened to him as meaning anything else
but boredom.
He did not know that, as he was speaking, the old years came back again
to Ferrol, bringing with them once again the vision of Margaret and
those secret walks outwards from Easterham, under the white moon of
romance and love and supple youth that could be his never more.
Ferrol sighed.
"You ought to be very happy," he said. "I think the happiest time of
my life was when I was reporting."
"Were you ever a reporter?" asked Humphrey.
"Oh yes! I didn't buy _The Day_ at once."
He rose and went to a cabinet to fetch silver and enamelled boxes of
cigars and cigarettes. The cigarettes were oval and fat.
"I don't think you've had enough scope," said Ferrol, handing him a
lighted match. "You've done well ... not as well as I hoped ... but
perhaps you'd do better elsewhere."
A peculiar sensation attacked Humphrey in the regions of his throat
and heart. ("Most certainly you are to have your salary raised or be
sacked.") He waited tensely.
The butler came into the room, apologetically.
"Half-past nine, sir," he said; "the car's waiting, sir."
"Oh--yes. I forgot. I've got to be back at the office.... All right,
Wilson.
"Let me see--what was I saying.... Oh yes, broader scope. Can you speak
French?" he asked abruptly.
"Just what I learnt at school.... I can read the papers."
"You'll easily pick it up.... Look here, I'll give you a lift back to
Fleet Street. Do you want to go there?"
"Yes," said Humphrey, and then, suddenly, for some odd reason, he
thought of Elizabeth. He was not very sure of his geography, but the
street in which she lived could not be far from here. "I think I'd
rather walk, if you don't mind.... I've got a call to make." He wanted
to tell Elizabeth how splendid Ferrol had been to him.
"Oh well! It doesn't matter. Come and see me at twelve to-morrow. I'm
going to send you to Paris."
"Paris!" echoed Humphrey, as if Ferrol had promised him Paradise.
"Paris," repeated Ferrol. "We're changing our correspondent."
X
He did not go to Elizabeth that night: he walked, in a dream, past
Knightsbridge and up Piccadilly, contemplating the fulfilment of all
his dreams. Everything seemed possible now. He was a young man--and
Ferrol was going to give him Paris; he was a young man--and Elizabeth
had given him her love. The sequence of this thought was significant.
It would be very fine to tell her.... At last he was lifted out of the
rut into a field of new endeavour. From Paris the path led to other
cities, of course--to Petersburg, Vienna, and Rome. One day he would
see them all. Life became at once very broad and open.
He walked on, an un-noteworthy figure in the throng of people that
moved along Piccadilly, his thoughts surging with the prospects of his
new life.
"Humphrey Quain ... Paris Correspondent of _The Day_."
He murmured that to himself. Glorious title! Splendid Ferrol. How noble
was this work in Fleet Street, holding out great promises to those who
served it well, and sacrificed everything on its altar. How could one
abandon a calling where fortune may change in a moment?
He passed through astonishing ranks of women whose eyes and lips
simulated love: one or two of them spoke to him in foreign accents. He
passed on across the Circus where the lights of the Variety Theatres
made a blur of yellow in the nebulous night.
His steps led him again to Fleet Street, and he walked with the joy of
a man treading the soil of his own country. It was always the same
when he passed the Griffin: deep satisfaction took hold of him at the
sight of the signs in all the buildings, telling of newspapers all the
world over, in this narrow Street in which the lives of him and his
kind were centred. The fascination of the Street was perpetual. It
belonged to him. It belonged to all of them. At every hour of the day
and night there were always friends to be met.
He turned into the cheery warmth of the Pen Club--friends everywhere
and Fleet Street smiling! There was laughter at the wooden counter,
where Larkin was telling some story to a group of men.
"Well, the next day I thought I'd go up and inquire after his
lordship's health. The butler was very kind. 'Come in,' he said. 'His
lordship's expecting you.' So up I went, thinking I was going to get a
fine story--he was supposed to be dangerously ill in bed, mind you."
Humphrey joined the group and listened. ("Have a drink?" said Larkin,
turning to him. "It's my shout.")
"Well," continued Larkin, "when I got to the room, there was his
lordship in pants and undervest--you know how fat he is--with
dumb-bells in his hands and whirling his arms about like a windmill.
'Do I _look_ like a dying man?' he said, dancing lightly on his
toes. 'Go back, young man, and tell your editor what you've seen.
Good-morning.'"
"Talking of funny experiences," said one of the others, "I remember--"
And so it went on, story after story, of real things happening in the
most extraordinary way. It was all this that Humphrey enjoyed, this
inter-change of experiences, this telling of stories that were never
written in newspapers, that belonged alone to them.
Presently Tommy Pride came in. "Hullo all!" he said, "Hullo! young
Quain--been busy to-day?"
They sat down together, and Humphrey noticed that Tommy's face had
changed greatly, even in the last few months. The flesh was loose and
colourless, and the eyes had a nervous, wandering look in them.
"Ferrol's going to send me to Paris--he told me so to-night," Humphrey
blurted out.
"Splendid," said Tommy. "Good for you." And then a look of great pathos
crept into his eyes, and he seemed to grow very old all at once. "I
wish I had all your chances," he said wistfully. "I wonder what will be
the end of me.... I hear they're making changes."
"Don't you bother," Humphrey said. "Ferrol knows what you're worth....
But, I say, Tommy, you don't mind, do you ... aren't you taking too
much of _that_," he pointed to the whisky glass.
"Oh, hell! What does it matter," said Tommy. "What does anything
matter.... I'm a little worried ... they're thinking of making
changes," he repeated aimlessly.
* * * * *
It was all settled in a few minutes the next morning. The Paris
appointment was definitely confirmed: he was to leave immediately. He
hastened to Elizabeth to tell her the wonderful news. It never occurred
to him that she could be otherwise than pleased and proud at his
success. But her manner was recondite and baffling.
"Have you accepted the post?" she asked.
"Why, of course," he said. "How could I refuse such a chance."
She regarded him dubiously. "No--you could not refuse it. I don't blame
you for not refusing it. I think I know how you feel...."
"It's splendid!" Humphrey cried. His voice rang with enthusiasm. "Fancy
Ferrol singling me out. It will be the making of me.... It might lead
to anything."
"But weren't you only going to stay in journalism for another year,
Humphrey?"
"Oh, of course, when I said that, I couldn't foresee that this was
going to happen.... Elizabeth," he said suddenly, with a great fear on
him, "do you want me to give it up now?"
"No ... no," she said in haste. "You don't understand. It's so
difficult to make you see. I wasn't prepared for this...." She laughed
for no reason at all. "I am glad of your success. I am glad you're
happy.... Of course, you don't expect me to come to Paris, like this,
at a moment's notice. You must give me time."
He smiled with relief. "Why, of course, I didn't imagine I could carry
you away at once.... But after a few months, perhaps. It will take me a
few months to get used to the work."
"Yes," she agreed, "after a few months. We shall see."
Her face was strangely sorrowful. Her attitude perplexed him. It hurt
him to find that she did not share in his rejoicings. It took away some
of the savour of his success.
He thought he was the master of his destiny. He could not discern the
hand of Ferrol moving him again towards a crisis in his life.