Miss Howe was walking in the business quarter of Calcutta. It was the
business quarter, yet the air was gay with the dimpling of piano notes,
and looking up one saw the bright sunlight fall on yellow stuccoed flats
above the shops and the offices. There the pleasant north wind blew
banners of muslin curtains out of wide windows, and little gardens of
palms in pots showed behind the balustrades of the flat roofs whenever
a storey ran short. Everywhere was a subtle contagion of momentary
well-being, a sense of lifted burden. The stucco streets were too
slovenly to be purely joyous, but a warm satisfaction brooded in them,
the pariahs blinked at one genially, there was a note of cheer even in
the cheeling of the kites where they sat huddled on the roof-cornices or
circled against the high blue sky. It was enjoyable to be abroad, in
the brushing fellowship of the pavements, in touch with brown humility
half-clad and going afoot, since even brown humility seemed well
affected toward the world, alert and content. The air was full of the
comfortable flavour of food-stuffs and spiced luxuries, and the incense
of wayside trees; it was as if the sun laid a bland compelling hand upon
the city, bidding strange flowers bloom and strange fruits increase.
Brokers' gharries rattled past, each holding a pale young man
preoccupied with a notebook; where the bullock-carts gathered themselves
together and blocked the road the pale young men put excited heads out
of the gharry windows and used remarkable imprecations. One of them, as
Hilda turned into the compound of the Calcutta Chronicle, leaned out to
take off his hat, and sent her up to the office of that journal in the
pleasant reflection of his infinite interest in life. “Upon my word,”
she said to herself as she ascended the stairs behind the lean legs of
a Mussulman servant in a dirty shirt and an embroidered cap, “he's so
lighthearted, so genial, that one doubts the very tremendous effect even
of a failure like the one he contemplates.”
She sent her card in to the manager-sahib by the lean Mussulman, and
followed it past the desks of two or three Bengali clerks, who hardly
lifted their well-oiled heads from their account-books to look at
her--so many mem sahibs to whose enterprises the Chronicle gave
prominence came to see the manager-sahib, and they were so much alike.
At all events they carried a passport to indifference in the fact that
they all wanted something, and it was clear to the meanest intelligence
that they appeared to be more magnificent than they were, visions in
dazzling complexions and long kid gloves, rattling up in third-class
ticca-gharries, with a wisp of fodder clinging to their skirts. It was
less interesting still when they belonged to the other class, the shabby
ladies, nearly always in black, with husbands in the Small Cause Court,
or sons before the police magistrate, who came to get it, if possible,
“kept out of the paper.” Successful or not these always wept on their
way out, and nothing could be more depressing. The only gleam of
entertainment to be got out of a lady visitor to the manager-sahib
occurred when the female form enshrined the majestic personality of a
boarding-house madam, whose asylum for respectable young men in leading
Calcutta firms had been maliciously traduced in the local columns of the
Chronicle--a lady who had never known what a bailiff looked like in the
lifetime of her first husband, or her second either. Then at the sound
of a pudgy blow upon a table, or high abusive accents in the rapid
elaborate cadences of the domiciled East Indian tongue, Hari Babu would
glance at Gobind Babu with a careful smile, for the manager-sahib who
dispensed so much galli* was now receiving the same, and defenceless.
* Abuse.
The manager sat at his desk when Hilda went in. He did not rise--he was
one of those highly sagacious little Scotchmen that Dundee exports in
such large numbers to fill small posts in the East, and she had come
on business. He gave her a nod, however, and an affectionate smile, and
indicated with his blue pencil a chair on the other side of the table.
He had once made three hundred rupees in tea shares, and that gave him
the air of a capitalist and speculator gamely shrewd. Tapping the table
with his blue pencil he asked Miss Howe how the world was using HER.
“Let me see,” said Hilda, a trifle absent-mindedly, “were you here last
cold weather--I rather imagine you were, weren't you?”
“I was; I had the pleasure of--”
“To be sure. You got the place in December, when that poor fellow Baker
died. Baker was a country-bred I know, but he always kept his
contracts, while you got your po-lish in Glesca, and your name is
Macphairson--isn't it?”
“I was never in Glasgow in my life, and my name is Macandrew,” said the
manager, putting with some aggressiveness a paper-weight on a pile of
bills.
“Never mind,” said Hilda, again wrapped in thought, “don't
apologise--it's near enough. Well, Mr. Macandrew,”--her tone came to a
point,--“what is the Stanhope Company's advertisement worth a month to
the Chronicle?”
“A hundred rupees maybe--there or thereabouts;” and Mr. Macandrew, with
a vast show of indifference, picked up a letter and began to tear at the
end of it.
“One hundred and fifty-five I think, to be precise. That communication
will wait, won't it? What is it--Kally Nath Mitter's paper and stores
bill? You won't be able to pay it any quicker if we withdraw our
advertisement.”
“Why should ye withdraw it?”
“It was given to you on the understanding that notices should appear of
every Wednesday and Saturday's performance. For two Wednesdays there has
been no notice, and last Saturday night you sent a fool.”
“So Muster Stanhope thinks o' withdrawin' his advertisement?”
“He is very much of that mind.”
The manager put his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, leaned back
in his chair, and demonstrated the principle that had given him a gold
watch chain--“never be bluffed.”
“Ye can withdraw it,” he said, with a warily experimental eye upon her.
“How reasonable of you not to make a fuss! We'll have the order
to discontinue in writing, please. If you'll give me a pen and
paper--thanks--and I'll keep a copy.”
“Stanhope has wanted to transfer it to the Market Gazette for some
time,” she went on as she wrote.
“That's not a newspaper. You'll get no notices there.”
“Cheaper on that account, probably.”
“They charge like the very deevil. D'ye know the rates of them?”
“I can't say I do.”
“There's a man on our staff that doesn't like your show. We'll be able
to send him every night now.”
“When we withdraw our advertisement?”
“Just then.”
“All right,” said Hilda. “It will be interesting to point out in the
Indian Empire the remarkable growth of independent criticism in the
Chronicle since Mr. Stanhope no longer uses the space at his disposal. I
hope your man will be very nasty indeed. You might as well hand over the
permanent passes--the gentleman will expect, I suppose, to pay.”
“They'll be in the yeditorial department,” said Mr. Macandrew, but
he did not summon a messenger to go for them. Instead he raised his
eyebrows in a manner that expressed the necessity of making the best of
it, and humorously scratched his head.
“We have four hundred pounds of new type coming out in the Almora--she's
due on Thursday,” he said. “Entirely for the advertisements. We'll have
a fine display next week. It's grand type--none of your Calcutta-made
stuff.”
“Pays to bring it out, does it?” asked Hilda inattentively, copying her
letter.
“Pays the advertisers.” There were ingratiating qualities in the
managerial smile. Hilda inspected them coldly.
“There's your notice of withdrawal,” she said. “Good-morning.”
“Think of that new type, and how lovely Jimmy Finnigan's ad will look in
it.”
“That's all right. Good-morning.” Miss Howe approached the door, the
blue glance of Macandrew pursuant.
“No notices for two Wednesdays, eh? We'll have to see about that. I
was thinkin' of transferrin' your space to the third page; it's a more
advantageous position--and no extra charge--but ye'll not mention it to
Jimmy.”
Miss Howe lifted an arrogant chin. “Do I understand you'll do that, and
guarantee regular notices, if we leave the advertisement with you?”
Mr. Macandrew looked at her expressively, and tore, with a gesture of
moderated recklessness, the notice of withdrawal in two.
“Rest easy,” he said, “I'll see about it. I'd go the len'th of attendin'
myself to-night, if ye could spare two three extra places.”
“Moderate Macandrew!”
“Moderate enough. I've got some frien's stayin' in the same place with
me from Behar--indigo people. I was thinkin' I'd give them a treat, if
three places c'd be spared next to the Chronicle seats.”
“We do Lady Whippleton to-night and the booking's been heavy. Five is
too many, Mr. Macandrew, even if you promised not to write the notice
yourself.”
“I might pay for one;” Macandrew drew red cartwheels on his
blotting-pad.
“Those seats are sure to be gone. I'll send you a box. Stanhope's as bad
as he can be with dysentery--you might make a local out of that. Be sure
to mention he can't see anybody--it's absurd the way Calcutta people
want to be paid.”
“A box'll be Grand,” said Mr. Macandrew. “I'll see ye get plenty of
ancores. Can ye manage the door? Good-day, then.”
Hilda stepped out on the landing. The heavy, regular thud of the presses
came up from below. They were printing the edition that took the world's
news to planters' bungalows in the jungle of Assam and the lonely
policeman on the edge of Manipore. The smell of the newspaper of to-day
and of yesterday, and of a year ago, stood in the air; through an open
door she saw the dusty, uneven edges of files of them, piled on the
floor. Three or four messengers squatted beside the wall, with slumbrous
heads between their knees. Occasionally a shout came from the room
inside, and one of them, crying “Hazur!” with instant alacrity,
stretched himself mightily, loafed upon his feet and went in, emerging a
moment later carrying written sheets, with which he disappeared into the
regions below. The staircase took a lazy curve and went up; under it,
through an open window, the sun glistened upon the shifting white and
green leaves of a pipal tree, and a crow sat on the sill and thrust his
grey head in with caws of indignant expostulation. A Government peon in
scarlet and gold ascended the stair at his own pace, bearing a packet
with an official seal. The place, with its ink-smeared walls and high
ceilings, spoke between dusty yawns of the languor and the leisure which
might attend the manipulation of the business of life, and Hilda paused
for an instant to perceive what it said. Then she walked behind her card
into the next room, where a young gentleman, reading proofs in his
shirt sleeves, flung himself upon his coat and struggled into it at her
approach. He seemed to have the blackest hair and the softest eyes and
the neatest moustache available, all set in a complexion frankly
olive, amiable English cut, in amiable Oriental colour, and the whole
illumined, when once the coat was on and the collar perfectly turned
down, by the liveliest, most engaging smile. Standing with his head
slightly on one side and one hand resting on the table, while the
other saw that nothing was disarranged between collar and top waistcoat
button, he was an interjection point of invitation and attention.
“The Editor of the Chronicle?” Hilda asked with diffident dignity, and
very well informed to the contrary.
“NOT the editor--I am sorry to say.” The confession was delightfully
vivid--in the plenitude of his candour it was plain that he didn't
care who knew that he was sorry he was not the editor. “In journalistic
parlance, the sub editor,” he added. “Will you be seated, Miss Howe?”
and with a tasteful silk pocket handkerchief he whisked the bottom of a
chair for her.
“Then you are Mr. Molyneux Sinclair,” Hilda declared. “You have been
pointed out to me on several first nights. Oh, I know very well where
the Chronicle seats are!”
Mr. Sinclair bowed with infinite gratification, and tucked the silk
handkerchief back so that only a fold was visible. “We members of the
Fourth Estate are fairly well known, I'm afraid, in Calcutta,” he said.
“Personally, I could sometimes wish it were otherwise. But certainly not
in this instance.”
Hilda gave him a gay little smile. “I suppose the editor,” she said,
with a casual glance about the room, “is hammering out his leader for
to-morrow's paper. Does he write half and do you write half, or how do
you manage?”
A seriousness overspread Mr. Sinclair's countenance, which nevertheless
irradiated, as if he could not help it, with beaming eyes. “Ah, those
are the secrets of the prison-house, Miss Howe. Unfortunately it is
not etiquette for me to say in what proportion I contribute the leading
articles of the Chronicle. But I can tell you in confidence that if it
were not for the editor's prejudices--rank prejudices--it would be a
good deal larger.”
“Ah, his prejudices! Why not be quite frank, Mr. Sinclair, and say that
he is just a little tiny bit jealous of his staff. All editors are,
you know.” Miss Howe shook her head in philosophical deprecation of the
peccadillo, and Mr. Sinclair cast a smiling, embarrassed glance at his
smart brown leather boot. The glance was radiant with what he couldn't
tell her as a sub-editor of honour about those cruel prejudices, but he
gave it no other medium.
“I'm afraid you know the world, Miss Howe,” he said, with a noble
reserve, and that was all.
“A corner of it here and there. But you are responsible for the whole of
the dramatic criticism,”--Hilda charged him roundly,--“the editor can't
claim any of THAT.”
An inquiring brown face under an embroidered cap appeared at the door;
a brown hand thrust in a bunch of printed slips. Mr. Sinclair motioned
both away, and they vanished in silence.
“That I can't deny,” he said. “It would be useless if I wished to
do so--my style betrays me--I must plead guilty. It is not one of my
legitimate duties--if I held this position on the Times, or say the
Daily Telegraph, our London contemporaries, it would not be required of
me. But in this country everything is piled upon the sub-editor. Many
a night, Miss Howe, I send down the last slips of a theatre notice at
midnight and am here in this chair”--Mr. Sinclair brought his open palm
down upon the arm of it--“by eleven the following day!” Mr. Sinclair's
chin was thrust passionately forward, moisture dimmed the velvety
brightness of those eyes which, in more dramatic moments, he confessed
to have inherited from a Nawab great-grandfather. “But I don't
complain,” he said, and drew in his chin. It seemed to bring his
argument to a climax, over which he looked at Hilda in warm, frank
expansion.
“Overworked, too, I daresay,” she said, and then went on a trifle
hurriedly. “Well, I must tell you, Mr. Sinclair, how kind your criticism
always is, and how much I personally appreciate it. None of the little
points and effects one tries to make seem to escape you, and you are
always generous in the matter of space too.”
Molyneux impartially threw out his hand. “I believe in it!” he
exclaimed. “Honour where honour is due, Miss Howe, and the Stanhope
Company has given me some very enjoyable evenings. And you'll hardly
believe me, but it is a fact, I assure you, I seldom get a free hand
with those notices. Suicidal to the interests of the paper as it is, the
editor insists as often as not on cutting down my theatre copy!”
“Cuts it down, does he? The brute!” said Miss Howe.
“I've known him sacrifice a third of it for an indigo market report.
Now, I ask you, who reads an indigo market report? Nobody. Who wants to
know how Jimmy Finnigan's--how the Stanhope Company's latest novelties
went off? Everybody. Of course, when he does that sort of thing, I make
it warm for him next morning?”
The door again opened and admitted a harassed little Babu in spectacles,
bearing a sheaf of proof slips, who advanced timidly into the middle of
the room and paused.
“In a few minutes, Babu,” said Mr. Sinclair; “I am engaged.”
“It iss the Council isspeech of the Legal Member, sir, and it iss to go
at five p.m. to his house for last correction.”
“Presently, Babu. Don't interrupt. As I was saying, Miss Howe, I make it
warm for him till he apologises. I must say he always apologises, and I
don't often ask more than that. But I was obliged to tell him the last
time that if it happened again one of us would have to go.”
“What did he say to that?”
“I don't exactly remember. But it had a tremendous effect--tremendous.
We became good friends almost immediately.”
“Quite so. We miss you when you don't come, Mr. Sinclair--last Saturday
night, for example.”
“I HAD to go to the Surprise Party. Jimmy came here with tears in his
eyes that morning. 'My show is tumbling to pieces,' he said. 'Sinclair,
you've got to come to-night.' Made me dine with him--wouldn't let me
out of his sight. We had to send a reporter to you and Llewellyn that
night.”
“Mr. Sinclair, the notice made me weep.”
“I know. All that about the costumes. But what can you expect? The man
is as black as your hat.”
“We have to buy our own costumes,” said Hilda, with a glance at the
floor, “and we haven't any too much, you know, to do it on.”
“The toilets in Her Second Son were simply magnificent. Not to be
surpassed on the boards of the Lyceum in tasteful design or richness
of material. They were ne plus ultra!” cried Mr. Sinclair. “You will
remember I said so in my critique.”
“I remember. If I were you I wouldn't go so far another time. There's
a lot of cotton velvet and satin about it, you know, between ourselves,
and Finnigan's people will be getting the laugh on us. That's one of
the things I wanted to mention. Don't be quite so good to us. See?
Otherwise--well, you know how Calcutta talks, and what a pretty girl
Beryl Stace is, for example. Mrs. Sinclair mightn't like it, and I don't
blame her.”
“As I said before, Miss Howe, you know the world,” Mr. Sinclair replied,
with infinite mellow humour, and as Miss Howe had risen he rose too,
pulling down his waistcoat.
“There was just one other thing,” Hilda said, holding out her hand.
“Next Wednesday, you know, Rosa Norton takes her benefit. Rosy's as
well known here as the Ochterlony monument; she's been coming every cold
weather for ten years, poor old Rosy. Don't you think you could do her
a bit of an interview for Wednesday's paper? She'll write up very
well--get her on variety entertainments in the Australian bush.”
Mr. Molyneux Sinclair looked pained to hesitate. “Personally,” he said
confidentially, “I should like it immensely, and I daresay I could get
it past the editor. But we're so short-handed.”
Miss Howe held up a forefinger which seemed luminous with solution.
“Don't you bother,” she said, “I'll do it for you; I'll write it myself.
My 'prentice hand I'll try on Rosy, and you shall have the result ready
to print on Tuesday morning. Will that do?”
That would do supremely. Mr. Sinclair could not conceal the admiration
he felt for such a combination of talents. He did not try; he
accompanied it to the door, expanding and expanding until it seemed more
than ever obvious that he found the sub-editorial sphere unreasonably
contracted. Hilda received his final bow from the threshold of what he
called his “sanctum,” and had hardly left the landing in descent when
a square-headed, collarless, red-faced male in shirt sleeves came
down, descending, as it seemed, in bounds from parts above. “Damn
it, Sinclair!” she heard, as he shot into the apartment she had
left, “here's the whole council meeting report set up and waiting
three-quarters of an hour--press blocked; and the printer Babu says
he can get nothing out of you. What the devil.... If the dak's* missed
again, by thunder!... paid to converse with itinerant females... seven
columns... infernal idiocy....”
* Country post.
Hilda descended in safety and at leisure, reflecting with amusement as
she made her way down that Mr. Sinclair was doubtless waiting until his
lady visitor was well out of earshot to make it warm for the editor.