Chapter I: Part I: Easterham (1)

MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD

I

If you had been standing on a certain cold night in January opposite the great building where _The Day_ is jewelled in electric lights across the dark sky, you would have seen a little, stout man run down the steps of the entrance at the side, three at a time, land on the pavement as if he were preparing to leap the roadway, with the sheer impetus of the flight of steps behind him, and had suddenly thought better of it, glance hurriedly at the big, lighted clock whose hands, formed of the letters _T-H-E D-A-Y_, in red and green electric lights, showed that it was nearly half-past twelve, and suddenly start off in a terrible hurry towards Chancery Lane, as though pursued by some awful thing.

Considering the bulkiness of the little man, he ran remarkably well. He dodged a light newspaper van that was coming recklessly round Fetter Lane, for there was none of the crowded traffic of daylight to be negotiated, and then, he turned the corner of Chancery Lane--and there you would have seen the last of him. He would have vanished from your life, a stumpy little man, with an umbrella popped under one arm, a bundle of papers grasped in his hand, a hat jammed down on his head, and the ends of a striped muffler floating in the breeze of his own making.

The sight of a man running, even in these days when life itself goes with a rush, is sufficient to awaken comment in the mind of the onlooker. It suggests pursuit, the recklessness of other days; it impels, instinctively, the cry of "Stop, thief," for no man runs unless he is hunted by a powerful motive. Therefore it may be assumed that since I have sent a man bolting hard out of your sight up the lamp-lit avenue of Chancery Lane, you are wondering why the devil he's in such a hurry.

Well, he was hurrying because the last train to Shepherd's Bush goes at 12.35, and, as he had been away from home since ten o'clock that morning, he was rather anxious to get back. He could not afford a cab fare, though only a few hours ago he had been eating oysters, bisque soup, turbot, pheasant, asparagus out of season and pêche Melba at the Savoy Hotel with eighteenpence in his pocket--and the odd pence had gone to the waiter and the cloakroom man. So that by the time he had reached the top of Chancery Lane, dashed across the road and through the door of the station, where a porter would have slammed the grille in another second, and bought his ticket with an explosive, panting "Bush," he had just tenpence left.

The lift-man knew him, nodded affably and said: "Just in time, Mr Pride."

"A hard run," said Mr Pride; and then with a cheery smile, "never mind; good for the liver." There were only a few people in the lift--four men and a woman to be precise. He knew the men as casual acquaintances of the last tube train. There was Denning, a sporting sub-editor on _The Lantern_; another was a proof-reader on one of the afternoon papers, who finished work in the evening but never went home before the last tube; then there was Harlem, the librarian of _The Day_, an amazing man who spoke all the European languages, and some of the Asiatic ones after his fifth glass of beer; the fourth was a friend of Harlem, a moody young man who wore his hair long, smoked an evil-looking pipe, and seemed to be a little unsteady on his feet. As for the woman, Pride knew her well by sight. She had hair that was of an unreal yellow, and a latch-key dangled from her little finger as though it were a new kind of ring. She always got out at Tottenham Court Road.

As the lift went down, its high complaining noise falling to a low buzzing sound seemed like the tired murmur of a weary human being glad that rest had come at last. The sound of the approaching train came rolling through the tunnel. They all rushed desperately down the short flight of steps that led to the platform, as the train came in with a rattle of doors opening and slamming, and scrambled for seats, while the uniformed men, who appeared to be the only thoroughly wide-awake people in the neighbourhood, said in the most contradictory fashion: "Stand clear of the gates," "Hurry on, please," and "Passengers off first."

Pride found himself in the smoking carriage, opposite Harlem, with his young friend at his side. It never occurred to him that there was anything exceptional in his dash for the last train. He did it four nights out of the week, as a matter of course. He was fifty years old, though he pretended he was ten years younger, and shaved his face clean to keep up the illusion. He used to explain to his friends that he came of a family famous for baldness in early years.

"Been busy?" asked Harlem, filling his pipe.

"Nothing to speak of," said Pride. "Turned up at the office at eleven, but there was nothing doing until after lunch. Then I had to go and see Sir William Darton--they're going to start the Thames Steamboats again. He wasn't at home, and he wasn't in his office, but I found him at six o'clock in the Constitutional. Got back and found they'd sent home for my dress clothes, and left a nice little envelope with the ticket of the Canadian Dinner.... That's why I'm so late to-night...."

Pride filled his own pipe, and sighed. "The old days are over!" he said. "They used to post our assignments overnight--'Dear Mr Pride, kindly do a quarter of a column of the enclosed meeting.' Why, _The Sentinel_ used to allow us five shillings every time we put on evening dress."

"Well, _The Sentinel_ was a pretty dull paper before the Kelmscotts bought it and turned it into a halfpenny," said Harlem. "Look at it now, a nice, bright paper--oh, by the way, do you know Cannock," he jerked his head to the man at his side. "He's _The Sentinel's_ latest acquisition. This is Tommy Pride, one of the ancient bulwarks of _The Sentinel_, until they fired him. Now he's learning to be a halfpenny journalist."

Pride looked at the young man.

"I don't know about being the latest acquisition," Cannock said. "As a matter of fact, they've fired _me_ to-day."

"It's a hobby of theirs now," Harlem remarked. "You'll get a job on _The Day_ if you ask for one. There's always room with us, ain't there, Tommy?"

Pride looked wistfully at the clouds of blue smoke that rose from his lips.... Yes, he thought, there was always room on _The Day_--at any moment they might decide to make alterations in the staff. The fact of Cannock's being sacked mattered nothing; he was a young man, and for young men, knocking at the door of Fleet Street, there was always an open pathway. Think of the papers there were left to work for--the evenings and the dailies, and even when they were exhausted, perhaps a job on a weekly paper, or the editorship of one of the scores of penny and sixpenny magazines. And, after that, the provinces and the suburbs had their papers. Pride knew: in his long experience he had wandered from one paper to another, two years here, three years here, until the halfpenny papers had brought a new type of journalist into the street.

"Married?" asked Pride.

"Not me!" replied Cannock, with a slight hiccough.

"Well, you're all right. You can free-lance if you want to."

"Oh, it's no good to me," Cannock said. "It's a dog's life anyhow, and I've only had two months of it. I'm going back to my guv'nor's business."

"Ah," said Pride, "there's no use wasting sympathy on you. Why did you ever leave it? What's his business?"

"That," Cannock laughed gaily and pointed to a poster as the train stopped at Tottenham Court Road Station. It was a great picture of barrels and barrels of beer, piled one above the other, reaching away into the far distance. Thousands of barrels under a vaulted roof. And in the foreground were little figures of men in white aprons with red jersey caps on their heads, rolling in more barrels, with their arms bared to the elbows. Across the picture in large letters Pride could read: "Cannock Brothers, Holloway. Cannock's Entire."

"Why, your people are worth millions!" Pride said. "What on earth are you doing in journalism."

"I know they are. That's what I was thinking of yesterday. I wondered how on earth they got anybody to do the work."

"Well, you won't mind me, I'm sure," Pride said, leaning over to Cannock. "I'm older than you, and I belong to what they call the old school of journalism. This isn't the lovely life some people think it must be, and it's going to get worse each year. We've got to fight for our jobs every day of our life. 'Making good,' they call it. I'm used to it," he said defiantly, looking at Harlem, "I like it.... I couldn't do anything else. I'm not fit for anything else. It has its lazy moments, too, and its moments of excitement and thrills. No, my son, you go back to the brewery, there's more money in it for you and all the glory you want with your name plastered over every bottle and on all the walls. Ask five hundred men in the street if they've ever heard of Tommy Pride. They've been reading things I've written every day, but they don't know who's written them. Ask 'em who's Cannock? Why, they'll turn mechanically into the nearest public-house and call for a bottle of you."

"I used to think it would be jolly to be on a newspaper," Cannock said. "My guv'nor got me the job. He's something to do with the Kelmscotts."

"So it is if you're meant to be on a newspaper. That's the trouble of fellows like you. You come out of nowhere, or from the 'Varsity, and get plunked right down in the heart of a London newspaper office--probably someone's fired to make room for you. You're friends of the editor and you think you're great men, until you find you're expected to take your turn with the rest. Then you grouse, because you're not meant for it. You've got appointments to keep at dinner-time, and you must get your meals regularly. Or you want to write fine stuff and be great star descriptive men at once, or go to Persia and Timbuctoo, and live on flam and signed articles. But, if you were meant to be a reporter, you'd hang round the news editor's room for any job that came along, you'd take any old thing that was given you, and do it without a murmur, and when you've done that for thirty years you might meet success, and stay on until they shoved you out of the office."

He saw that Cannock was smiling, and seemed to read his thoughts.

"Me?" he said. "Oh, you mustn't judge by me. I belong to the old school, you know. I'm the son of my father--he was a Gallery man, and died worth three hundred pounds, and that's more than I am. I'm one of the products of the last generation, and all I want is £2 a week and a cottage in the country." The little man relit his pipe, and puffed contentedly. "Lord! I should like that!" he said.

"You're always frightened of being fired, Tommy," said Harlem. "You know well enough you're what we call a thoroughly reliable and experienced man, and Ferrol wouldn't have you sacked."

"There's always that bogy," Pride answered with a laugh. "You never know what may happen. The only thing is to join the Newspaper Press Fund and trust in the Lord. None of the youngsters do either of these things to-day."

Cannock and Harlem prepared to leave as the train slowed down before Marble Arch. "It's a rotten game," said Cannock. "I'm glad I'm out of it. Good-bye."

Pride took his hand. "Good-bye." He saw them pass the window, and wave to him as they went under the lighted "Way Out" sign, and then he turned to his papers with a sigh. But somehow or other he did not read. He always carried papers about with him, through sheer force of habit, much as the under side of a tailor's coat lapel is bristling with pins. He had been with news all day; he had written some of it; he had read the same things in the different editions of the newspapers; he had left the street when they were printing more news; and the first thing he would do on waking up in the morning would be to reach out for a copy of _The Day_ which was brought with the morning tea. He did not read news as the average man does--he regarded it objectively, reading it without emotion. The march of the world, the daily happenings moved him as much as a packet of loose diamonds moves the jeweller who handles them daily, and weighs them to see their worth.

He was thinking of Cannock, with his future all clear before him: Cannock, with beer woven into the fibre of his being, as news was in his. It must be rather fine to be independent like that.... Idly, he wondered what Cannock's guv'nor was like: did he admire these pictures of the vast hall crowded with beer barrels, enough to last London for a whole Saturday night, and ready to be filled up again for all the nights in the week.... He looked round the carriage at the faces of those who were travelling with him. Five boisterous young people were making themselves a noisy nuisance at one end of the carriage. Opposite him, in the seat lately occupied by Harlem, a working man was staring ahead of him with an empty wide stare as if, in a moment of absent-mindedness, his actual self had slipped away, and left a hulk of shabbily-clothed body, without a spark of intelligence. Others were nodding, half asleep, and there was one man, with closed eyes, and parted lips, breathing stertorously, whose head bobbled from side to side with the rocking of the train.... He woke up, suddenly, as the train stopped with a jerk, and the conductor called out "'Perd's Bush."

Tommy Pride always gave his papers to the lift-man. They waited for the last passenger, who came lurching round the corner with his head still bobbling and his eyes half lost below the drooping eyelids. He steadied himself against the wall--and his hand spread over another of those glorious posters. What a picture for Cannock!... Somehow, Pride rejoiced to think that he was not Cannock.

He went past the Green to one of the small houses in a turning off the Uxbridge Road. The moon shone out of the wintry sky, white and placid, above his home. He let himself in, and turned out the flicker of gas in the hall. He walked on tiptoe into the sitting-room, and having taken off his boots went to the fireplace. Here on a trivet he found a cup of cocoa, and his slippers warming before the fire. There were three slices of thin bread and butter on the table. He never went to bed without his bread and butter. During his meal he saw a copy of _The Day_ on a chair, and he read bits of it mechanically, for he had read it all before. The clock struck one, and he bolted the front door and went softly upstairs. As he turned on the light his wife stirred uneasily, and he came to the bedside. She opened her eyes at his kiss, and smiled tenderly at him.

"Is it very late, dear?" she asked.

"One o'clock."

"Poor sweetheart!" she murmured. "Did you have your cocoa?"

"Yes," he said.

"Tired?"

He laughed. "Not very. I'm a bit cheerful, to tell you the truth. Tell you about it in the morning. Ferrol spoke to me to-day. He's a fine chap."

II

That was the magic of it! Ferrol had spoken to him. The conversation had been quite ordinary. "Well, Pride, I hope things are going all right?" And Ferrol had nodded cheerfully and smiled as he passed into his room. Perhaps, he had asked Pride to come and see him.... It was not what Ferrol said that mattered: it was the Idea behind it--that Ferrol knew and remembered his men individually.

Out of the insensate tangle of machines and lives, high above the thunderous clamour of the printing-presses, the rolling of heavy vans stacked high with cylinders of paper, the ringing of telephone bells, the ticking and clicking and buzzing, floor above floor, of the great grey building in which they all lived, Ferrol rises with his masterful personality and calm voice, carving the chaos of it all into discipline and order. He looms, in the imagination, powerful and omnipresent, making his desires felt in the far corners of the continents.

Ferrol whispered, and Berlin, Vienna or San Francisco gave him his needs. He was the brain and the heart of the body he had created, and his nerves and his arteries were spread over the earth. He placed his fingers on the pulse of mankind, and knew what was ailing--knew what it wanted, and found the specialist to attend to it.

His influence lay over the narrow street of tall buildings, urging men onwards and upwards with the gospel of great endeavour. Some men, as their pagan ancestors worshipped the Sun as the God of Light, placed him on a pedestal in their hearts, and bowed down to him as the God of Success, for the energy of his spirit was everywhere. If you searched behind the ponderous double octuple machines, rattling and thudding, and driving the work of their world forward, you would have found it there--the motive power of the whole. It lurked in the tap-tap of the telegraph transmitter, in the quick click of the type in the slots of the linotype machines as the aproned operators touched the keyboard; it was in the heart of the reporter groping through the day for facts, and writing them with the shadow of Ferrol falling across the paper. The clerks in the counting-house, the advertising men, the grimy printers' boys in the basement, the type-setters and the block-makers on the top floors near the skylights, messengers, typists--they were all bricks in the edifice which was built up for the men who wrote the paper--the edifice of which Ferrol was the keystone.

His enemies distorted the vision of him; they saw him, an inhuman, incredible monster, with neither soul nor heart, grimly eager for one end--the making of money. They wrote of him as an evil thing, brooding over sensationalism.... One must see him as Tommy Pride and all those who worked for him on _The Day_ saw him, eager, keen, and large-hearted, a wonderful blend of sentiment and business, torn, sometimes, between expediency and the hidden desires of his heart. One must see him reckless and, since he was only human, making mistakes, creating, destroying, living only for what the day brought forth....

The spirit of Fleet Street, itself.

* * * * *

Like a silver thread woven into the texture of his character, in which good and evil were patterned as they are in most men, a streak of the sentimental was there, shining untarnished, a survival of his days of young romance. Very few people knew of this trait; Ferrol hugged it to himself secretly, as though it were a weakness of which he was ashamed. It came upon him at odd, unexpected moments when he was hemmed in by the gross materialism of every day, this passionate, sudden yearning for poetry and ideals. He would try to lift the latch of the door that had locked the world of beauty and art from him. Swift desires would seize him to be carried away in his motor-car, as if it were a magic carpet, to some Arcadia of dreaming shadows, with the sunlight splashing through the green roofs of the forests.

The sentimental in him would, at such times, find expression in many ways. He made extravagant gifts to people; he would take a sudden interest in the career of one man, and bring all that man's longings to realization by lifting him up and making his name. How glorious that power was to Ferrol! The power of singling men out, finding the spark of genius that he could raise to a steady flame, fanning it with opportunity; he could make a man suddenly rich with a stroke of his pen; pack him off to Arabia or South America and bid him write his best. Sometimes they failed, because it was not in them to succeed, and Ferrol was as merciless to failures as he was generous to those who won through.

The men he made!...

Sometimes, when the waves of sentiment swept over him, he would try and materialize his ideals for a time. He would commission a great poet to contribute to _The Day_; he would open his columns to the cult of the beautiful, and then a grisly murder or a railway disaster would happen, crushing Ferrol's sentiment. Away with the ideal, for, after all, the world does not want it! Three columns of the murder or the railway disaster, with photographs, leaders, special articles, all turning round the news itself. That was how it was done.

And now the fit was on Ferrol as he sat in his room with the crimson carpet and the dark red walls, hung with contents bills of _The Day_. He had been going over the morning letters with his secretary, listening to the applications for employment. He made a point of hearing them, now and again. There was one letter there that suddenly awoke his interest; the name touched a chord in his memory, a chord that responded with a low, tender note.... And, his mind marched back through the corridors of the past, until he came out upon the old, quiet, cathedral town of the days of his youth.

He saw himself, a slight, eager young man, long, long before his dreams of greatness came to pass, yet feeling in his heart that the plans he was making would be followed. A young Ferrol plotting within himself to wrest spoils from the world, longing intolerably for power and the wealth that could give it. Well did he know, even in those far-off days, that destiny was holding out her hands, laden with roses and prizes for him.... Those were the days of the young heart; the days of nineteen and twenty, and the first love, scarce understood, that comes to us, mysterious and beautiful. He saw a very different Ferrol then. The lip unshaven, that was now hidden with a bushy moustache turning grey; the hair, now also grey under the touch of Time, silky and black. He saw this boy walking the lanes that led out of Easterham town, in the spring-time, with a girl at his side.

Over the abyss of the years the boy beckoned to him, and Ferrol looked back on a yesterday of thirty years. Her name was Margaret, and she was for him the beginning of things. From her he learned much of the tenderness of life, and the love of Nature that had remained with him. He was a clerk in an auctioneer's office then, with most of his dreams still undreamt. He and Margaret had been children together. They were children now, laughing, and walking over the fields with the spire of the cathedral, pointing like a finger to the skies, in the distant haze of the afternoon.

There was more purity in that first romance of his than in anything he had found in after years. Oh! wonderful days of young unsullied hearts, and the white innocence of life. The memory of evenings came to him, of kisses in the starlight, when incomprehensible emotions surged through him, vague imaginings of what life must really be, and the torture of unrest, of something that he did not understand. Her eyes were tearful, and yet she smiled, and at her smile they both laughed. And so the spell was broken, and they trudged, side by side, homeward in the silent night.

She inspired him, and in that, perhaps, she fulfilled her destiny. She sowed the seeds of ambition in his soul: he would dare anything for her, yea, reach his hand upwards, and pluck the very stars from Heaven to lay at her feet. And, very gradually, a dreadful nausea of Easterham came over him. His desk was by the window that looked upon the High Street: he almost remembered, now, the day when it first dawned on him that the place was no longer tolerable. It was mid-day and the heat quivered above the cobble-stones: two dogs were fighting with jarring yelps that could be heard all down the street; the baker's cart went by with an empty rattle, and Miss Martin of Willow Hall drove in as usual to the bank next door. An old man was herding a flock of sheep towards the market-place, and the sheep-dog ran this way and that way, barking as he ran. Three sandwich-men, grotesquely hidden in boards, slouched past in frayed clothes and battered hats, with pipes in their mouths. He read their boards mechanically.... "Sale at Wilcox's.... Ladies' Undergarments.... Ribbons." He had read the same thing every day in the week; he had looked out upon the same scene, every day, it seemed; the dogs had been quarrelling eternally, the shepherd passed and repassed like a never-ending silent dream; grocer, and baker, and banker, and Hargrave, the farmer ... there he was again touching his hat to Miss Martin as she stepped from her trap.... O God! the heavy monotony of it all fell like a weight on his heart.

The nostalgia grew. The chimes of the cathedral lost their music, the stillness of the town became more unbearable than the turmoil and clatter of cities. There was something to be wrought for and fought for in the world outside. This was not life; this was a mausoleum!

The arguments with his father--his mother was dead--and the long time it took to persuade him.... The parting with Margaret, and the whispered vows and promises, spoken breathlessly from their earnest young hearts. It seemed they could never be broken.

He came to London. It was in the late seventies, at the beginning of the spread of education that has resulted in the amazing flood of periodicals: it was a flood that led Ferrol on to fortune. His scope widened; he grew in his outlook, and saw that here was a way to power indeed. He shone like a new star over London, gathering lesser lights around him, developing that marvellous power of organization, that astonishing personality that drew men to him, until he seized his opportunity and bought the moribund _Day_ when it was a penny paper on its last legs. In ten years' time he had become wealthy and powerful, and since then he had gone on and on until no triumph was denied him.

And Margaret...? The years passed, and with the passing of time, they both developed. That young love, once so irrefrangible, grew warped and misshapen, until it finally snapped. There was no quarrel; neither could reproach the other; they simply grew out of their love, as so many young people do. There was a correspondence for a time, but it slackened and presently ceased altogether. She must have felt her hold loosening on Ferrol, as with a thousand new interests he came upon the wide horizon of life. She must have noticed this in his letters, and instead of seeking to bind him to her against his will, she just let him go. And Ferrol must have weighed the impossibility of asking her to marry him at this point of his career, when he was striving and struggling upwards; not all men travel the fastest when they travel alone, but Ferrol was one of those who could run no risk of being delayed. They had none of the pang of parting ... but years afterwards, when Ferrol was a childless widower (for he married when he was thirty-five, and walked behind his wife's coffin two years afterwards), he wondered what had become of Margaret, and always he cherished that memory of his one romance that had tapered away out of his life. He could never forget the sweet simplicity of Margaret's face, the tears on her eyelashes, and the yielding softness of her youth when he pressed her to his heart and lips with wonderful thoughts quivering through his soul.

He remembered one day in his life, a few years after the death of his wife, when a wild desire had seized him to handle his past again, as an antiquarian turns over his treasures and rejoices in some ancient relic. It was a day in summer, when the heat was heavy over London, and the city smelt of hot asphalt and tar: without a word to anybody he had left his work and taken the train, back to Easterham and his youth.

The old familiar landmarks rose up before him, bringing a strange feeling of age to him. So much had happened in the interval that it seemed that year upon year had piled up a wall before him, separating him for evermore from this old world that had been. The ivy still clung to the castellated walls of the Cathedral close; the clock chimed as he went by, just as he had heard it chime in the long days that were gone. The very rooks seemed unchanged as they clamoured huskily in the old beeches.

And yet, with it all, there was something different, and he knew that the difference lay not so much with the place as with himself. His entire perception had altered. He saw things through eyes that had grown older. The High Street, with its brooding air of stillness, that had once seemed so stale and intolerable to him, now appealed to him with its wondrous peace, a magical spot far away from the turmoil of things. There were the same names over the grocers' and the drapers' and the ironmongers' shops, but old Matthew Bethell's quaint bookshop had gone, and in its place there stood a large green, flat-fronted establishment, with an open window stacked high with magazines and newspapers, and a great poster above it, thus:

The Day.

ONE HALFPENNY

HOWARD
SLANDER
CASE.

FULL REPORT.

The sentimental in him winced, but the material business man glowed with pride as he saw the great poster, proclaiming _The Day_ paramount over its rivals. There was always a conflict between the two men that made up that complex personality known as Ferrol. He went to the house where he had once lived; his father was dead now, and as he looked up at the open window and saw a strange woman doing some needle-work, it seemed to him as if the people that were living there had laid sacrilegious hands upon the holy fragrance of the past; as if their prying eyes had peered into all the hidden secrets that belonged to him. He turned away resentfully towards the old inn, the Red Lion, whose proprietor, old Hamblin, remembered him from other days when he revealed himself, and was inclined to be overcome with the importance of the visit, until Ferrol put him at his ease. They chatted together, the old man, with his back to the fireplace, coat-tails lifted from habit, for the grate was empty on this hot day, Ferrol sitting astride a chair, watching the blue stream of smoke that came from Hamblin's lips as he puffed at his long white churchwarden.... Hamblin must have stood like that during all the years that Ferrol had been in London. The only change that came to the people of Easterham was death.

They talked of people they had known, and so the talk came naturally to Margaret. He listened unmoved to the news of her marriage, and found that nothing more than conventional phrases came from his lips when Hamblin told him of her death. Somehow, it seemed to him so natural. He had been away seventeen years, and Easterham had lost its hold upon him now. The death of his father ... the new face at the window of their house.... The death of Margaret seemed to come as a natural sequence to things.

Hamblin went on talking about people. "She married Mr Quain, one of the College schoolmasters.... I expect he was after your time ... a good deal older than you, Mr Ferrol.... They had one child, a boy ... living with his aunt now. All her people left Easterham years ago...." And so on.

It was in the afternoon that Ferrol came back to London, feeling that he had been prodding at wet moss-grown stones in some old decayed ruin, turning them over to see what he could find, and having them crumble apart in his hands. He never went back again.

* * * * *

That was thirteen years ago. Ferrol's memories ended abruptly. He touched a button, and a young man, with a shiny, pink face and fair hair parted in the middle, came in with a notebook and pencil in his hand. He looked as if he spent every moment of his spare time in washing his face. There was a quiet, nervous air about him--the air of one who is never certain of what is going to happen next. Ferrol's abrupt sentences always unnerved him.

"Trinder," he said, "there was a letter among the lot to-day. Quain. Written on _Easterham Gazette_ notepaper. Asking for editorial employment."

"Yes, sir." Trinder had long ceased to marvel at Ferrol's memory for details.

"Write to him the usual letter asking him to call. Wednesday at twelve."

Trinder made a note and withdrew.

Ferrol wondered what Margaret's boy was like.

III

At the age of twenty Humphrey Quain found himself on the threshold of a world of promise. It seemed to him that if, out of all the years of time, he could have chosen the period in which he would live, he would have picked out the dawn of this twentieth century of grace. England was just then in the throes of casting from herself the burden of old traditions. The closing years of the nineties had been years of preparation and development--years of broadening minds and new ideas, until quite suddenly, it seemed, the century turned the corner, and yesterday became old-fashioned in a day, and all eyes were fixed on the glorious sunrise of the twentieth century--the wonderful century.

People, you remember, played with the fantasy of beginning a brand-new century as if it were a new toy. Nobody who was living could remember the birth of the last century. It was a new emotion for everyone. There was the oddity of writing dates, discarding for ever the 189-- and beginning with 19--; old phrases, such as _fin-de-siècle_, became suddenly obsolete; new phrases were coined, among which "Twencent" (an abbreviation for twentieth century, and a tribute to the snap and hustle with which the world was now expected to go) survived the longest; songs were sung at music-halls; there was a burst of cartoons on the subject; people referred jokingly to the last century, parodying the recollections of boresome centenarians; while the unhappy _Nineteenth Century_, as though the calendar had taken a mean advantage of its mid-Victorian dignity, determined never again to risk being so hopelessly out of date, and added to its title the words "and After," thereby enabling future centuries to go for ever without ruffling its title.

In the midst of this change, when the death of Queen Victoria seemed to snap the present from the past irrevocably, and the novelty of a king came to England again; when the first of the tubes that now honeycomb London was a twopenny wonder, and people were talking of Shepherd's Bush, and Notting Hill Gate, and marvelling curiously why they had never talked of them before; when Socialism was burrowing and gnawing like a rat at the old, worn fabric of Society, urging the working-man to stand equal in Parliament with the noblest lords in the land. In the midst of all this there arose suddenly, born with the twentieth century, the Young Man. He had already come, answering the call of the country in the dark disillusioning days of the Boer War. People had seen the young clerks and workmen of England marching shoulder to shoulder down the streets of London, like the train-bands of Elizabethan days. When the country was in peril the flower and the youth of England came to its aid, and the older men could do nothing but stay at home and look on.

The young man, scorned by his elders in all the periods of the nineteenth century except those last years of development, found himself suddenly caught up on the high wave that was sweeping away the rubbish and the sentiment and the lumber of the old customs, and borne above them all. He was set on a pinnacle, as the new type; the future of the world was said to be in the hands of the young men; the old men--even forty was too old, you remember--had had their day. They were now like so much old furniture, shabby and undesirable, second-hand goods, better replaced by strong, well-made, up-to-date things.

It really was a wonderful time for the Young Man. In the old days it had been customary for him to show respect to his elders, to call them "sir," to stand up when they came into a room, or raise his hat if they met in the streets, to offer his seat to them if there was none vacant, and generally to treat them as old ladies, with polite reverence mingled with awe.

The worship of age had become a fetish; it was improper to criticize the opinions of a man older than yourself; it was heresy to think that you were as capable as the old men; youth had to wait and grow old for its chances in life; youth was ridiculed, snubbed and held in the leash.

And then, quite suddenly it seemed, though Ibsen had heard it knocking at the door long before, the younger generation burst upon us with an astonishing vigour, taking possession of the new century, trampling down the false gods of age and bringing in its train, like boys trooping from a nursery, hosts of new toys and new ideas in everything.

It was, I think, _The Day_ that finally discovered the Young Man. Ferrol had known the bitter opposition which he had fought in his own twenties and thirties, and he shone as the apostle of youth. The Young Man, from a neglected embryo, became a national asset; all hands were uplifted to him in the dawn of the new century. He was enthroned in the seats from which his elders were deposed.

People seeking for a symbol of the new life that was beginning, looked westwards and found a whole nation that typified the Young Man who was to be their salvation. They found America, eager, with strident voice, forceful and straining its muscles to the game of life--a whole nation of young men. It became the fashion to take America as a model. There was an invasion of boots and bicycles and cameras. "Look," every one cried, "see how they do things better than we do. Look at their magazines--how wonderful they are." Phonographs, kinetoscopes, the first jumpy cinematographs, photo-buttons, chewing-gum, they came to the country, and were hailed gladly as from the land of Young Men.

Presently the young men themselves came. They came with their hair parted in the middle, and keen, clean-shaven faces with very predominant chins. They were mere boys, and they had a bounce and a boisterous assurance that took one's breath away. With them came loudly-striped shirts, multi-coloured socks, felt hats and lounge suits in city offices, and, later, soft-fronted shirts and black silk bows for evening wear. They opened London offices for New York firms, and showed us card-indexing systems, roll-top desks, dictaphones and loose-leaf ledgers. All letters were typewritten, and the firm who sent out a letter in the crabbed handwriting of its senior clerk was accounted disgracefully behind the times.

The Young Man set the pace with a vengeance, and it was a panting business to keep abreast of him.

Cock-tails and quick-lunch restaurants appeared next; griddle-cakes, clam-chowder and club sandwiches were shown to us; and finally, as though having absorbed their nutriment, we had assimilated their habits, a fierce desire to speak with a nasal accent took hold of us.

The man who wanted to get a job spoke with as much American accent as he could muster up; he looked American, and he affected American ways; his affirmative was "sure," and he wore his hair long and sleek, divided evenly in the middle. He was the Young Man, cocksure, enthusiastic and determined--the most remarkable product of his time.

Ferrol found him, a year or so before he arrived, with that instinct of his, almost second-sight, which never failed. He boomed him as a Type; he glorified him, and gave him high posts in the office of _The Day_. With the exception of Neckinger, the editor, who came straight from New York, he was the native product, and Ferrol was always on the look-out for more of him.

And so, in the midst of all this, when the cry for the Young Man was at its hungriest, when "hustle" and "strenuous" were added to the vocabulary, we see Humphrey Quain, waiting on the outskirts, watching his opportunity, and meanwhile bending over the counter of the _Easterham Gazette_ office, coat off and shirt sleeves turned back to the elbow, folding up copies of the _Easterham Gazette_ as they came damp, with the ink wet on them, from the printing-press in the basement.

* * * * *

The _Easterham Gazette_ was, unhesitatingly, the worst paper in Easterham. It was an eight-page weekly journal, with a staff of one editor, one reporter and Humphrey Quain. When things were slack in the reporting line, the reporter (an extraordinarily shaggy person called Beaver, whose thumbs were always covered with ink) was expected to "fill up time at case"--which means that he was to assist in setting up the paper in type. The editor, whose name was Worthing, walked about in a knickerbocker suit and a soft grey hat, and it was part of his business to obtain advertisements for the _Gazette_. The leading articles he wrote were always composed with one eye on the advertiser. In praising the laudable action of Councillor Bilson in opposing the introduction of trams into the town, there was a pleasant parenthesis, something in this manner: "It needs no words of ours to echo the praise bestowed on that gallant champion of our town, our much-respected Councillor Bilson (in whose windows, by the way, there is a remarkable exhibit of Oriental coffee-making) ..." and so on.

It was Beaver's duty to make the "calls" during the week. How he managed them all, I don't know; but in the intervals of attending the police-court, the council meetings, and all the meetings of local organizations, he would call at the hospital, at the mayor's parlour, on the town clerk, on the churches and cathedrals, snapping up unconsidered trifles in the shape of accidents, civic news, church services, and all the other activities of Easterham life. Sometimes during the week Beaver would swing himself astride a bicycle, as frayed and as shabby as himself, and pedal to Wimberly, or Pooleham, or further afield to Great Huxton for local meetings, all of which were of vast interest to the _Easterham Gazette_, since its copies went weekly--or were supposed to go--over the whole of the county, and it had annexed to its title the names of all the best villages. Its full title, by the way, was: _Easterham Gazette, and Wimberly, Pooleham, Great Huxton, Middle Huxton and Little Huxton Chronicle; Coomber, Melsdom and Upper Thornton Journal_, largest circulation in any district, weekly one penny. It was nigh upon sixty years of age, and therefore its tottering infirmity may be excused.

Humphrey Quain came into the office ostensibly as a clerk. In the beginning he thought it was a fascinating game seeing the things that one wrote in print. Therefore, all unconsciously, he started to write. He began with "Cycle Notes" and "Theatre Notes," and presently he found himself with sufficient interest to fill a whole column, which dealt mainly with local gossip, and was called "The Easterham Letter." It was addressed always to the editor and was signed "P and Q." When he was not writing, he was addressing wrappers or making out the weekly bills for the newsagents; and every Friday evening he stood by the counter, folding up the papers as they came to him, and handing them to grubby little children who were sent by the newsagents, or sold the papers for themselves in the streets.

It really was a remarkable paper for the twentieth century. Its advertisement space was one shilling an inch, or less if you promised not to tell any one; three men, of course, could not fill the whole of these eight great sheets, and therefore the carrier's wagon delivered every Thursday to the _Easterham Gazette_ office, mysterious thin brown parcels the size of a column, and rather heavy. Simultaneously, all over the country, like parcels were being delivered, and, if by chance you compared an issue of the _Easterham Gazette_ with any thirty local papers in the North, South, or East of England, you would have been amazed at the remarkable similarity of their contents. They had the same serial story of thrilling adventure, the same "Cookery Notes and Kitchen Recipes," the same "Home Hints to Household Happiness," word for word, and the same column of jokes.

For these long parcels that arrived every Thursday at the _Easterham Gazette_ office were columns of type cast from moulds, sent down from a London Agency which has made a mighty business of supplying general matter, from foreign intelligence to fashion notes, ready for the printing-press, at so much a column. They call it "stereo."

Humphrey Quain had been in the office for three years. His aunt was a friend of Mr Worthing, the editor, and his father thought it would be a good thing for the boy to have some association with the world of letters, however distant. Shortly afterwards, Quain senior had taken a master's appointment in a private boarding-school at Southsea, and Humphrey remained with his aunt. A year later his father died.

He parted with his father with a straining heart, for Daniel Quain was a tremendous success as a father, though he was a failure as a man. Of course this was only Humphrey's point of view: what more could a boy want than a father who could fashion any kind of toy, from whistles to steamboats, out of a block of wood; who knew enough of elementary science to make a pin sail on water, by letting it rest on a cigarette paper which soaked and sank away, leaving the pin afloat; who could blow a halfpenny from one wine-glass to another, and produce whooing sounds from a hollow tube by placing it over a gas flame. Wonderful father!

It was Daniel who fostered in Humphrey's heart the love of reading: those early books were adventure stories by Fenimore Cooper, Kingston and Ballantyne. He read Harrison Ainsworth, too, and Henty, and took in the _Boy's Own Paper_, and, in short, did everything in the way of reading that a normal, happy, healthy-minded boy should do. "Keep clear of philosophy until you are thirty," Daniel said one day, as he was showing him how three matches can be made to stand upright; "then you won't understand enough of life to be miserable."

Later, he came to the Dickens and Thackeray stage, but he was pained to find he could not enjoy Scott. He confided his distaste to his father, as though it were a guilty failing of which to be ashamed.

"Form your own likes and dislikes in reading as in everything else," said Daniel. "Don't be a literary snob, and pretend you enjoy the acquaintance of books merely because they belong so to speak to the 'upper ten' of the book-world."

When his father died, Humphrey was first brought face to face with the stern things of life. It was a chance remark of his aunt that gave him the first glimpse. "You'll have to do something for yourself, Humphrey," she said one day. "That father of yours did nothing for you." She always spoke bitterly of his father.

Humphrey had never thought of it before. It had seemed to him that things came naturally to people from father to son: that, in some mysterious, unthought-of way, when he was about twenty or so, he would find himself with an income of sorts, or some settled employment.

"You must Get On," said his aunt, looking at him through her spectacles. "Young men Get On quickly to-day. You must grasp your opportunities."

So here came a new and delightful interest into Humphrey's existence. He perceived something fine in it all. From that day he had one creed in life: the creed of Getting On. This determination swamped every other interest in life. It was as if his aunt had suddenly touched upon some internal button that had started off a driving-wheel within him, and set all the machinery of energy into movement. How did one "Get On" in the world? He began to take an enormous interest in everything, to follow the doings of men and cities outside Easterham; his knowledge widened slowly, for he had no brothers and was singularly innocent in the everyday sense of the word.

And all the time, during those Easterham days, he was beginning to understand things. He saw that Beaver and Worthing, with their small salaries and narrow capacities, had not "Got On"--would never "Get On." He realized too, that his father, well through life, had been little better than a man in the beginning of it. On the other hand, Bilson, with his large, shining shop, might be said to have "Got On," and just when he was half deciding that Bilson held the secret, Bilson suddenly went bankrupt, owing to the failure of some coffee plantations in Ceylon. It seemed a perplexing business, this getting on. Easier to talk about than to do. And, after all, the getting on-ness of Bilson had been circumscribed by the narrow area of Easterham. The real success meant power, and the ability to use it: wide power over the affairs of other people.

These were not the thoughts of a moment: they were lingering thoughts that spread over three years, from seventeen to twenty, those three years when he was at the _Easterham Gazette_ office, with only Beaver and Worthing for his models in life.

They were thoughts in the intervals of writing "notes" on local subjects--indeed, the notes were the outcome of the thoughts--of reading, and of cycling, and going to the theatre. And then one day a most amazing thing happened.

Beaver Got On!

Yes, it was really incredible, but the fact was there indisputable and glaring. Beaver, shaggy and unkempt, who seemed to have settled down for ever to the meetings and the calls and the police-courts ("Harriet Higgins, 30, no fixed abode, charged with being drunk and disorderly, etc."), broke through the cobwebs that had settled on him, in an unexpected and definite manner.

He came to Humphrey one day and remarked quite casually, "I've given old Worthing the push."

Humphrey looked at him: he wore a Norfolk jacket, with old trousers, and a tweed hat of no shape at all. Beaver took his pipe out of his mouth, and Humphrey noticed the short nails on his stumpy, fat fingers. Beaver always bit his nails.

"I've given old Worthing the push," said Beaver. "Look at this." He showed a letter to Humphrey, who saw that it was from the "Special News Agency" of London, employing Beaver in their service at £2, 10s. a week.

"How did you get it?" Humphrey asked.

"Wrote in," said Beaver, gnawing a finger-tip. "Been writing in on the quiet for the last year. Fed up with old Worthing and filling up time at case."

"I thought you had to know how to write well if you wanted to work in London," Humphrey said. There were no illusions about Beaver's style.

"Oh! the Agency doesn't want writing--it wants a man who can take down shorthand verbatim.... I'm off next week," said Beaver.

Humphrey looked longingly at him and his letter, and then round at the whitewashed walls of the office, with its Calendars and local Directories for years past on the shelf, and the pile of _Gazettes_ on the corner of the counter. Mr Worthing passed through the office, stopped, and scowled at Beaver.