JIMMY--AND A MATTER OF FOOD
London, as we already know, had held out hands of welcome to the
innocent Jimmy, and had promised great things to him; moreover, changing
her name to Fortune, she had seemed to tell him that in a little time
she would be his for the mere wooing. He soon discovered, however, what
manner of jade she was, and how shamefully she had deceived him.
It must be said at once that Mr. Baffall had behaved rather well.
Remembering complacently his own first struggles in the great
city--struggles intimately connected even now in his mind with a
shortage of food and of clothing--he decided that the boy was starting
with good prospects--far better, indeed, than those his patron had
enjoyed. The boy was put into a good business, and a sufficient sum was
to be paid for his lodging in a modest way; Jimmy had but to work within
those carefully-arranged lines that had been drawn for him, and all
would be well. He would rise step by step, and presently take his place,
with his advancing years, in the great army of men in that particular
line of life. Mr. Baffall shook his head at the thought of the
possibilities of Jimmy rising to be a second Baffall on such beginnings;
such things did not happen every day. But for the rest he was well
provided for, and there was an end of the matter.
Jimmy's lodging was in a sort of rough-and-tumble haphazard
boarding-house in the neighbourhood of Camden Town--a boarding-house
crowded with young men and half-grown youths, and presided over by a
lady of untidy appearance and rasping voice, and with an air of being
always in a hurry. She was assisted in the management of the place by
two haphazard, scrambling, hurrying servant-maids--never quite clean
(save on special occasions, when they managed to get out for an hour or
so) and always haggard and tired-looking. Everyone appeared to be in a
great hurry in the morning, from the time when the first young man
clattered downstairs, and plunged at his breakfast, until the time when
the more aristocratic, who did not begin work until ten o'clock, hurried
away from the house; and everyone appeared very tired at night, what
time that strangely composite meal known as a "meat tea" was set before
the returning workers. Jimmy discovered, something to his dismay, that
this, outside the actual life of the warehouse in that turning off
Cheapside, was to be his life.
The thing was hideous from the beginning; hideous in the sense that, in
being swallowed up in such an existence, he became at once a mere unit
in the scheme of things--one of a hurrying, driving crowd, with no
individuality, and no time to think of anything but his work, and his
journeys to and fro, and his eating and his sleeping. And even sleep was
hideous; because, to his dismay, he found that, as a junior in the
boarding-house he had to share a room with two other youths, given a
little to sky-larking, and to the smoking of cheap cigarettes.
At the warehouse, as a beginner, he did whatever odd work was set before
him; wondered a little at first, in a petulant fashion, why the men and
the boys seemed so much happier than he was, and so generally contented
with their lot. But, grimly silent regarding the past, and suspicious as
to the future, he took his place in this new life like a bruised,
stunned creature driven along by an unkind fate. Only afterwards was he
to learn that there is another life of the senses, quite independent of
the mere work of the hands, or the mere sights and sounds around about
us.
His first night at the boarding-house began disastrously, and ended in a
triumph. The room in which the "meat tea" had been partaken of was musty
and noisy; such of the boarders as had not gone out were seated about
the room; one noisy youth was pounding a broken-down piano in a corner.
Jimmy decided to go out; and after roaming about the streets for a long
time, went back, and went up to his room. He found himself alone there,
and was rather glad of the seclusion; he partially undressed and lay
down on his bed, with his hands clasped under his head and his eyes
closed--wondering a little that so great a change could have come into
his life in a matter of a few hours; wondering also what the morrow was
to bring him, in this great place wherein he was to make his fortune.
For he had not yet been to the warehouse.
He was disturbed by an enormous thud at the door, and by the entrance of
the two youths who shared the room with him, and who had apparently been
having a scuffle on the landing, the better to impress the new lodger.
Jimmy turned a little on one side to look at them; decided that they
were not particularly interesting; and rolled over on his back again. A
little smothered laughter followed; and presently, while he still lay
with his eyes closed, something shot across the room and struck him on
the arm. Jimmy was up in a moment, seated on the side of the bed, and
looking gravely down at the shoe that had been thrown at him. The others
were apparently very busy with their undressing.
"I beg your pardon," said Jimmy gravely--"who threw that?"
The elder of the two--a tall weedy youth with loose lips, turned to the
other, and grinned and shook his head. "I dunno' what he's talking
about," he murmured feebly--"or what he's doing with my shoe."
The loose lips tightened in a moment as the shoe caught them full and
square; he looked round in amazement at this outrage, to discover Jimmy
standing in the centre of the room, with his hands gripped tight at his
sides, and a very dangerous look in his eyes. For this was what Jimmy
wanted, in the sense that he could relieve an over-burdened heart only
in some such fashion as this, and because, too, he felt that it was
demanded of him that he should show London something of his quality.
It was Jimmy's second fight; he remembered the first even now, in the
sweet, clean smelling woods, and decided that this was an even more
important battle. The weedy youth got up from the bed on which he was
seated, and with a pitying glance at Jimmy, and an amused shrug at his
companion, as though suggesting that he supposed this sort of thing had
to be done, the better to keep people in their places, strolled out to
meet his assailant. And the next moment found his head in a most
surprising fashion striking the floor.
For the country boy, well fed and well cared for, and used to hard
exercise out of doors, was more than a match for this cigarette-smoking,
narrow-chested youth, who stood half a head taller. He got up slowly,
and looked with pained surprise at his friend; then tried rushing
tactics, and came at Jimmy like a whirlwind. But Jimmy met him coolly;
and he went down again, and decided to stay there. The other youth
muttered something about speaking to the landlady in the morning, and
not knowing quite what things were coming to; until Jimmy happening to
glance in his direction, he decided to get into bed as rapidly as
possible. Jimmy, seeing that the matter was at an end, calmly undressed
and went to bed himself.
He had no further trouble after that; so far as the boarding-house was
concerned he was left severely alone; while at the warehouse everyone
was so busy, and those in authority were so constantly hurrying
backwards and forwards through the place, that there was but scant
opportunity for anything but the work itself.
Yet in the time that followed he sunk more and more into himself, as it
were, and became more and more dependent upon himself. It was part of
Jimmy's nature that he must at all times make the most of everything,
and enlarge upon any circumstance if possible; his very dreams were
large ones. Therefore, when it happened that he realised, as day after
day went on in its dull monotony, that there was nothing here about
which he could boast, he determined to be silent about his life. There
had been a sort of dim feeling in his mind that he would write to Moira;
surely if he wrote to the old home any letter would be forwarded. But in
a curious shame-faced fashion he realised that to Moira most of all he
must have something to write about; must have done something in the big
world to which she had so confidently consigned him before he could
approach her again. And as yet he had done nothing.
In the very beginning of his career at the warehouse he trembled more
than once, when the outer door opened, at the possibility of someone
who had been with him in the old days coming in, and finding him there
hauling parcels about, and for the most part without a coat; every time
the door swung back on its hinges he felt it might be possible that
Moira or Alice--or, worst thought of all, Charlie Purdue--might walk
into the place: Charlie, with a grin upon his good-humoured face that
would have been exasperating. But, of course, no one ever came, and
after a time he ceased to watch the door.
For the most part in the evenings he wandered about the streets--staring
into shop windows, and lingering about outside theatres, and generally
touching the mere fringe of the great life that was pulsing all about
him. But when some twelve months had gone by, the coming of younger lads
than himself to the boarding-house as well as to the warehouse sent him
a step up in each place; so that at the boarding-house he had a tiny
room at the very top of the house to himself--a mere cupboard, but still
a room in his eyes; while at the warehouse he somehow got to a desk
whereat he wore his coat, and left the parcels behind. And in so doing
gained a little money for himself in addition to the meagre pocket-money
he had had.
That room at the top of the house became in a very big sense the boy's
home. It was something to return to; something to know, in the stress
and worry of the day, was waiting for him, even though he might occupy
it for but a few hours at the most. And no sooner had he got that room
than he set about, in quite an imitative fashion, to do what others had
done before him. An imitative fashion, because he had lighted by
accident upon what was to him a wonderful romance; the story of a boy as
poor as he was, and working as hard as he worked, who had gathered books
about him, and made of himself a great and celebrated man.
Jimmy being a mere creature of impulse, and in a desperate hurry always
to do whatever his mind happened to light upon--until something else
attracted his attention--began setting about the great and celebrated
business without delay. He bought books--a few at a time, and quite
unsuited to his purpose--and fell asleep over them with great regularity
in the room upstairs for a week or two. They taught him
something--stirred that brain that had not been stirred by anything
beyond figures for a long time; made him think for himself. For, save
that grounding in elementary things given by the Rev. Temple Purdue, and
a deeper grounding in classical matters the importance of which he had
not grasped, Jimmy was profoundly ignorant. For the first time he began
to remember something of the romantic side of life, as told him years
before by Old Paul; for the first time began to apply that
half-forgotten knowledge to his own purposes. Two years from the time
Jimmy had landed in London, when he was coming near to his twentieth
year, he began sheepishly and with a locked door to write. By that time
the books covered two long shelves, and were in every state of binding
imaginable, and in every condition of repair.
Is it necessary to state that he began with verse? Finding most
unaccountably a line singing in his head for the greater part of one
day, he went home, and set that line down at the top of a fair sheet of
paper, and added another; afterwards erasing the second as being
unworthy of the first. Stumblingly, he went at the thing again; felt
that the first line was not after all what it might be, and, moreover,
that it was difficult to fit with a rhyme; therefore he began again.
Poor Jimmy! His beginnings were about all there were of him for a time;
and he spoilt much paper. But by that time the subtle craze of it had
eaten into his very life, and the warehouse was a mere necessary thing
by which he must live, but which did not really concern him in the
least. After a time the verses failed to concern him also; he determined
to return to them at a later period--much as Mr. Thomas Hardy had done,
after making himself famous in another direction; also there was Mr.
George Meredith to be thought of, and remembered with satisfaction. In
other words, Jimmy tackled prose--as being easier.
The writing seemed at first the smallest part of it all; it was the
sending of the stuff about. Bulky packages came back to the
boarding-house, with the names of various papers and magazines stamped
aggressively on the covers; and, of course, created comment. Jimmy bore
it with a burning face, and tried to call to mind other persecutions
endured by the elect of the earth under similar conditions; the stories
of sons who had been thrashed by commonplace fathers upon showing marked
literary, artistic, or musical ability afforded him keen satisfaction.
Obviously he was on the right road, although no thrashings in the actual
sense were his.
But there came a day--I should rather have written a day of days--when a
letter arrived from a paper--a packet far too small to contain the bulky
thing that had been sent. Opening it, Jimmy discovered that a certain
wonderful being desired to see him; tremblingly, Jimmy sought the office
in his dinner-hour, and inquired for the editor. A small boy with no
reverence about him--no lowering of the voice in speaking of so great a
personage--took his name up; and presently Jimmy stood in the presence,
with his knees knocking together, and a curious dryness in his throat.
The editor was a youngish man of a slim appearance and with flaxen hair.
He was seated at an untidy desk, with his coat off, and with a pipe that
was cold in his mouth. The room appeared to be decorated for the most
part with photographs, chiefly of ladies. Photographs large and
small--Continental photographs and English; photographs in costume, and
photographs in but little costume at all. Paper clippings were all over
the floor; and at the opposite side of the desk a pale boy in spectacles
was at work upon a drawing that seemed to the unpractised glance of
Jimmy already completed.
The man looked up at him, scanning him narrowly, and nodded towards a
chair. "Well, Mr. Larrance," he said, "and what can we do for you?"
Jimmy thought it was rather the other way about, in the sense that he
was desirous of knowing what he could do for the editor; but he smiled
feebly, and murmured something about a letter he had received. The man
was silent for a moment or two, as though debating what to say; finally
he looked up, screwing his eyes shrewdly, and spoke.
"I suppose you run away with the idea that you're a genius--eh?" Jimmy
shook his head and blushed at the mere suggestion, although he had a
sneaking feeling that that suggestion might not be so very wrong after
all. "Because, if you've got that sort of idea, you're not much good to
us. You may be able to write some day; there are indications of it; but
you've got a lot to learn. How long's your story?"
He took up the precious manuscript from beside him, and carelessly
turned over the leaves. Jimmy had not thought of that vital point; he
said he wasn't quite sure.
"You're like all the rest, my boy," retorted the young man, throwing the
packet on his desk. "You write a story to please yourself--and you
ramble on, and you fill it with accounts of green trees, and waving
grass, and birds, and God knows what; things that everybody knows about,
and don't want to read about; and you send us--say twenty thousand
words--when we run to anything from five hundred to three thousand.
Bless you, you wouldn't look at the paper--would you, now?"
Jimmy murmured that he had seen the paper--well, everywhere; and the
young man grinned.
"That's our circulation; you couldn't help seeing it," he said. "But
what do you think would happen to us if we printed that"--he indicated
Jimmy's manuscript, without even glancing at it--"and shoved about five
pages of it down their throats, just to see what they _would_ swallow?
What would be the result? I'll tell you."
He threw one leg over the arm of the chair, and struck a match; forgot
to apply it to the pipe, and blew it out, and dropped it into his
waste-paper basket. Jimmy watched him reverently.
"We should first of all be deluged with letters from all the smart young
men who read us, and snigger at us, and like us; and they'd want to know
what the something something we'd printed it for, or where we found it;
and they'd offer to do something a great deal better, just to show us
what the public wanted. William," he looked across at the boy at the
other desk--"give me a copy of the last for Mr. Larrance--will you?"
The boy stretched out an arm, without looking up, and handed the man a
copy of the paper; the editor, after flicking over the leaves
complaisantly, passed it on to Jimmy. "Just look at that," he said.
Jimmy looked at the thing a little helplessly--turning over the pages
mechanically; then he handed it back to the young man. "I see," he
murmured.
"No, you don't; you only think you do," retorted the other, not
unkindly. "My boy--we ain't out for literature, because we've got a
living to make; but we do the thing honestly, and we work pretty hard.
Observe, please."
He flicked over the first leaf, and pointed dramatically to the page
disclosed.
"Snippets generally--some American, and some dodged up out of old
chestnuts with a new flavour. But"--he held up a forefinger, and
winked--"but, I say, doesn't the young man who buys us repeat them over
to his friends, and his mother (if the old lady'll stand 'em!), and his
girl, and a few others. Page two: a small story, sir, cut straight out
of the heart of the Latin Quarter--with a real grisette, and an artist
who is going into the Salon in five minutes--and a hopeless love story.
Picture in the middle of the grisette--dodged up from a photograph, with
the hair altered. About nine hundred words--and I paid eleven and
sixpence for it. He's a beginner; but he'll do well presently. And that
isn't his right name."
"It seems very short," Jimmy ventured to say.
"They've got to be short; I cut twenty lines out of this myself; he'd
worked in something about his mother's grave, which wasn't in the
picture a bit. Page three: picture of two girls and a man--dodged-up
joke underneath. Page four: the beginning of our Grand New Serial
Story--which you may begin any week by reading the synopsis at the top;
I do the synopsis myself, and the ungrateful beast of an author
complains bitterly. That takes up--the serial, I mean--three pages and a
bit. More pictures; Continental cuttings--we have to tone them down a
bit, but we get 'em very cheap--then a competition which takes up a
page, and for which the prizes are small; then our Beginners' Page;
which means that they send us stories, and we cut 'em down a bit, and
send 'em a nicey-picey letter, saying they'll do better by and by, and
will they please let us hear from 'em again. That's rather a cheap
page," he added, contemplatively. "Then we finish up with a couple of
novelettes in a nutshell; about six hundred words each--must be full of
plot; then answers to correspondents--chiefly love and complexion stuff;
and there you are! That's what we call editing," he added, proudly. "You
can take that home if you like, and have a good look at it."
"I quite see that any story as long as mine wouldn't suit," said Jimmy,
a little mystified. "I ought to have sent it somewhere else." He half
rose from his seat.
"Stop a bit," said the young man, taking up the manuscript, and looking
through it with his lips pursed. "Stop a bit." He tossed the thing over
on to the other desk, and called to the boy: "William--what should you
say was the length?"
William cast an eye over it--the eye of the expert who was not to be
deceived, turned to the last page, seemed almost to weigh it in his
hand, and then replied.
"Fifteen five hundred--might be a little over," he said, handing it
back, and resuming his work as though this were a matter of the smallest
interest.
"There you are, you see," exclaimed the editor with a triumphant smile.
"No good at all. But I'll tell you what I think--and I wouldn't tell
everybody. It's got an idea in it; and I can assure you we often get
double the quantity, without any idea at all. Now, I wonder if you're
prepared to listen to reason?"
Jimmy indicating that he was prepared to listen to anything, the young
man made one or two suggestions. In the first place, he was to take it
away, and read it over; he was to take out the idea that was in it, and
to boil it down--that was the actual expression used--to something like
two thousand words. He was to leave in as much love as possible.
"They'll stand any amount of that sort of thing," said the young man;
and he was also to leave in all the sensation. If he came across a tree
he was simply to say it was a tree, and not attempt to describe it; nor
was he to let himself go on scenery at all. And if he did all that
satisfactorily, and didn't spoil the idea, he would have a guinea. "We
pay on Fridays," said the young man easily, as though that was the most
ordinary part of the business.
"What we could do with you," said the young man, as he shook hands at
parting--"would be to take one a fortnight; that would mean half a
guinea every blessed week for you. Then now and then we could let you
have a novelette to do--fourteen or fifteen thousand words, simply
packed with incident--and for those we _do_ pay; you'd get about four
ten for those. Then now and then, when you'd got into the way of it, you
could do a six or seven-hundred worder; I mean the novelette in a
nutshell; and that would be another five bob. So there you are; you
wouldn't need to look anywhere else. And always on Fridays, mind
you--there would be your little bit waiting for you. Good morning!--and
remember we don't want names; we're looking for young talent, and we're
teaching it to earn its living."
So this particular young talent went back to the warehouse with dreams;
Jimmy was absolutely certain that the thing could be done, and here,
almost at once, was a fortune awaiting him. After all, when you came to
think of it, it was simply a matter of hard work, but of congenial work
at that; an hour or two every evening meant four tens and guineas and
five bobs and what not; and when you came to add those together--well,
your fortune was made. As a mild beginning, Jimmy tackled that bulky
manuscript which he was to boil down that very night.
In the first place, the beginning must certainly stand. There was the
full description not only of the heroine, but of her surroundings;
despite what the young man had said as to his objection to descriptions
of scenery, Jimmy felt that when that young man came to read again that
particular part he would feel with Jimmy that it would be a crime to let
it go. There was, of course, one objection; on counting it laboriously,
Jimmy discovered that it amounted to just over six hundred words.
Then he came to the big scene in the middle; the real incident of the
thing--that "idea" that had taken the fancy of the editor. Not a word of
that must be missed--for every word had its special value. But that was
a matter--(again much laborious counting)--of just over five hundred
words.
Then he tried cutting the thing up; slicing out a paragraph or two here,
and a sheet or two there, and reading them after he had joined them
carefully; but the real beauty of the thing, Jimmy felt, was gone. He
went to bed with a headache; only to dream that the young man was
tearing reams of valuable manuscript, while the boy William looked on
with an exasperating smile.
The next evening Jimmy began to write the whole thing again; for Jimmy
was learning his lesson. He got it down to something near the limit
arranged in two nights; decided, on an impulse, to take it to the office
himself; and was received somewhat coolly by the young man.
"We're pretty full up just now," said the young man, scratching his head
dubiously, and looking down into the pipe that never seemed to be
alight. "However, I'll have a go at it."
Jimmy went away, and waited a week. He dared not write anything else;
this was to be a test of his efficiency. If he could please this man he
would go ahead; there were prospects for him if this matter came out
fortunately. At the end of the week he once more climbed the stairs and
knocked at the door. The room seemed full of the editor and the pale
boy and several other men; all, with the exception of the pale boy,
smoking and laughing and talking.
The editor detached himself, and came across to Jimmy, evidently in a
good temper. "Let's see," he said, with the remainder of a smile that
had been the proper compliment to a story he had just heard still
lingering about his lips--"didn't I write you?"
Jimmy murmured that he had not yet had a letter; he wondered if by any
good chance it would ever happen that he would be on such terms of
familiarity with the great one as was the gentleman with his hat on the
back of his head who had just sat down in the editorial chair and taken
one of the editorial cigarettes.
"Oh, it's all right," said the young man. "Not quite the idea--in the
working out, you'll understand; you seemed to miss it a bit somehow. But
I've made it sixteen shillings. You know the office; go there on Friday,
and tell 'em who you are. I'll have the account passed through."
Jimmy was staggering out at the door when the young man, who had darted
back to his desk, came out after him, and called him. He whispered Jimmy
on the staircase.
"Here's a couple of drawings--they haven't been used for a long time,
and you might write up to 'em----"
"Write up to them?" asked Jimmy, in perplexity.
"Yes--yes," replied the other impatiently. "Make it a thousand words, so
that we can space it out well; and write naturally and lightly. I don't
care what order you use 'em in, but write so that those will come in as
illustrations. Let me have it next week. And, by the way," he added
hurriedly, "let the man's figure be the hero. Very necessary, that."
Jimmy discovered, on examining the drawings, that the figure of the man
in one was that of a young gentleman with very broad shoulders and a
very beautiful waist, apparently denouncing a lady upon a sofa; that of
the gentleman in the other was heavily bearded, and was in the act of
dashing forward to stop a runaway horse on which an altogether different
young lady was being carried away at a great rate. Jimmy hesitated for a
long time; but finally made it a matter of years between the first
picture and the second, and so grew the beard naturally, while he exiled
his hero for the purpose.
Jimmy became a frequent visitor to the office over which the young man
presided, and a less frequent visitor to that other office where the
shillings and occasional sovereigns were handed out to him. There was
that to be said for the matter, at least; that the money was always
forthcoming at the right time, if it had been earned; and a pretty
starveling crew it was that waited about on Fridays--though a merry one
nevertheless. Once or twice, too, it happened that something of Jimmy's
that had not fitted the fancy of the young man was sent on its
wanderings elsewhere, and fell into hands that detained it, and paid
meagrely for it. So that Jimmy was becoming rich in a small way.
All this took time; I have been careful to say nothing of the quakings
and the fevers of doubt and anxiety, the bitternesses and all the other
little trifles that filled out a matter of two years; Jimmy forgot those
pretty easily, because Jimmy was young, and Jimmy was fighting.
In proportion as that work took up his time the warehouse sunk into the
background. For there were weeks when the money he earned at the
warehouse was as nothing in proportion to what, for example, a novelette
(at four ten) had brought him; other weeks when it loomed large, because
he had earned nothing. So that it came about, after a time, that he
came to be looked at a little askance in that busy house in the turning
off Cheapside; was reprimanded once or twice for blunders and omissions;
and with the remembrance of his secret income in his mind took but scant
notice of what was said. Then, on the pretext of a change in the staff,
Jimmy was sent for one day, and was astounded to find that his services
were no longer required.
Astounded in a fashion, and yet not altogether displeased. A fleeting
recollection of the man who had given him his first opportunity of
making a start in life caused him to murmur the name of Mr. Baffall; but
the man before whom he was arraigned shook his head, and smiled.
"Mr. Baffall was good enough to recommend you, Larrance, a long time
ago; and we accepted that recommendation because he had had a good deal
to do with the firm. But Mr. Baffall would be the last to expect us to
keep on anybody we don't want. You're all right, Larrance--but you're
not all right here. You dream too much; you're not smart enough. I
think, for all our sakes, it would be better if you shook hands, and had
a look round somewhere else. London's a big place--and I daresay you'll
get on."
So Jimmy, with a curious feeling that was half fear and half elation,
turned his back upon the warehouse he had known for some four years, and
went out into the world in a new sense. He had plenty of money, as he
counted money then, in hand; and there was work to be done for the young
man who presided over that particular paper, and for other men
doubtless, young as well as old.
The first thing Jimmy did was to leave that boarding-house in the
neighbourhood of Camden Town, and to look about for a place more suited
to his requirements as a literary man, and as an independent one to
boot. After much searching, he discovered some rooms at the top of an
old house in a small court leading out of Holborn; with an ancient
wheezy dame to cook his breakfast and to make his bed, and to shift the
dust about his room on occasion. There he established himself with his
books; from there, on the first evening, he went as a new luxury to a
small restaurant, and partook of a modest meal.
Somehow or other, matters did not seem to go on so smoothly after that
time. For example, he went one day to the office over which his first
friend presided, to discover that first friend standing outside on the
pavement, with his coat on for the first time, thoughtfully scratching
his chin and staring at his boots. On Jimmy accosting him, he looked up,
and laughed ruefully.
"We've doubled up, dear boy," he said. "The blessed old rag has held out
as long as it could; and the circulation has gone down and down till we
hadn't got a gasp left in us; and we couldn't even afford to give it
away! Not but what we're doing the thing properly, mind you," he added
hastily. "You'll find your money all right on Friday--but it's the last.
What's going to become of me I don't quite know; but I think there's a
chance of my being mopped up by one of the big syndicates. I'm going to
try, at any rate; it isn't quite so wearing a life."
Jimmy discovered that they had sold the novelettes; he had an
introduction to the new proprietor, and contrived to get a little work
out of him, though at a cheaper rate even than before. For the rest,
with something like a new despair beginning to knock at his young heart,
he scurried round, and wrote anything and everything he could.
Often and often, in those first few months, he knew what it was to have
to think more than twice before spending a sixpence for food; he grew,
too, to dread the coming of the wheezy old dame with a certain
red-covered little book which contained the account for his breakfasts
and for her own personal attendance upon him; invented excuses, now and
then, to go out, so as to miss seeing her. But in some fashion he
managed to pay that; managed also to put aside a little towards that big
item--rent. Though that was a nightmare, indeed--a thing that meant the
counting of days with a palpitating heart.
He found his way, quite naturally, to the British Museum and its
reading-room; discovered also near it a tiny tea shop, where, provided
you bought butter-and only one pat at that--you might eat as much bread
as ever you liked. Oh--a blessed institution, and one to be encouraged!
So, struggling along, with an occasional flutter of the heart--(only
very occasional this) at the sight of his name on a list of contents of
some small paper; often hungry, and much perplexed at times over the
question of clothes; with a wistful eye to the great men at the top, who
had begun long ago perhaps in some such fashion as this; Jimmy trod the
ways of freedom with a fair amount of contentment.