Chapter 9

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[266] 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[267] 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[268] 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[269] 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[270] 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[271] 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.

[272]

"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[273] 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."

[274]

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[275] 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[276] 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."