Chapter 3

In those days Humphrey, trained in the school of experience, took his place in the ranks of Fleet Street, that very narrow community, where each man knows the value of his brother's work.

He was being shaped in the mould. The characteristics of the journalist were more strongly marked in him than they had ever been. He was self-reliant and resourceful, he had acquired the magic faculty of making instant friendships; he had developed his personality, and there was about him a certain charm, a youthful ingenuousness of expression that stood him in good stead when he was at work. People liked Humphrey; among his colleagues in the Street, he was not great enough for jealousy, nor small enough to be ignored. He steered the middle course of popularity.

He had been long enough now on The Day for Ferrol to perceive his limitations. Humphrey did not know—nobody knew—that Ferrol from his red room was watching his work, noting each failure and each success, watching and weighing his value. And it was with something of regret that Ferrol realized that in Humphrey he had found not a genius, but merely a plodding conscientious worker, perhaps a little above the average. For, in spite of Rivers, who found that genius and reporting do not go hand in hand, Ferrol was always searching alertly for the miraculous writer whose style was individual; whose writing would be discussed in those broad circles where The Day was read.

One sees Ferrol hoping for that spark of genius to glow in Humphrey, dreaming, whenever his thoughts[226] took him back, of days now so dim that they seem never to have existed, and faced only with disappointment. Up to a certain point he could make Humphrey—but no further. Perhaps, after all, the boy might show his worth in work of broader scope.... Ferrol plans, and plans, rearranging the men in his employ, moving a man here, and a man there, a god with life for a chessboard and human lives as the men.... One sees Humphrey, young and vigorous, doing his daily work....

It was an extraordinary life, full of uncertainties and sudden surprises ... a life of never-ending energy, with little rest even in sleep, for into his dreams there crept all the tangle of the day's happenings. Disaster swept all round him, but he seemed to be lifted above all evil by the magic of his calling. The king can do no wrong: no journalist ever seemed to be hit by the hazards of life. Murders, the collapse of houses, railway smashes, roofs falling in and burying people in the rubble, shipwrecks and terrible fires.... Humphrey was always on the spot, sooner or later, with a dozen others of the craft....

He was outside the range of the things that really mattered. Politics and the problems that touched deeply the lives of the people did not come his way. They fell into the hands of the lobby correspondent, the man in the Press Gallery of the House, or the sociological writers who stood somewhat aloof from the routine of the Street.

But, on the whole, the life was glorious, in spite of its bitter moments.

"I shall have to chuck it, you know," Kenneth Carr said, one day. "This life is too awful: it's the system that's wrong, there is no system."

That was Kenneth's point of view. Of course there was no system. Is there any system in life?

"We're all sick men, in Fleet Street," sighed Kenneth.[227] "We're sick and we're growing old. Our nerves are broken with the continual movement and unrest. There's no time allowance made for our stomachs: I tell you, we're all sick men in Fleet Street, brain, nerve and stomach."

At such times, Humphrey would laugh and defend the Street and its work, just to cheer Kenneth up.

"Don't you go and drop out," he urged. "I shall be left without a friend."

The next day they met each other on the platform at Paddington. There was to be a Royal week in Windsor. A foreign monarch had come to England.

"Well, what do you think of the life to-day?" Humphrey asked.

"Oh, it's all right," Kenneth laughed. "I suppose I wanted a little fresh air and sunshine.... I shall get it in the forest."