After breakfast next morning, that meal so dear (in more senses than one) to the undergraduate, obviously the first thing to be done was to secure a place to dwell in. It was not wise to stay on at the hotel a moment longer than was necessary; the expense was too great. He thought at once of the Temple. It was a good address, and near most things. He knew enough of London to understand that Bloomsbury was clerk-land, and though cheap, quite impossible. Westminster was better, but not quite central enough. Finally, after some trouble, he took two first-floor rooms in one of the quiet streets running from the Fleet Street end of the Strand to the Embankment. They were well-furnished bachelor rooms, with a low window-seat from which a glimpse could be caught of red-sailed barges with yellow masts of pitch-pine floating slowly down the tide, while on late wintry afternoons the sunsets stained the brown water with a grim and sullen glory.
Gobion had a lurking hope that he might meet the comic landlady that Mr.
Farjeon writes about so nicely in the flesh. He was doomed to disappointment. The person, called Mrs. Daily, who owned the house had no peculiarities, and nothing to suggest the type he was in search of save rotundity of form. He was loth to think the comic landlady was a fabulous monster, or an extinct one--the lady who says, "Which Mister Jones come tight last blessed hevening has hever was, and which I "ad to b.u.mp "is "edd on the stairs to keep "im quiet while the girl and I "elped "im up to the third floor back." Was she really fabulous? It was a sorrowful reflection.
The same day that he took the rooms he moved from the West and took possession. He had dined at the hotel before he left, and when he had unpacked his portmanteaux he sat before the fire feeling horribly dull and uneasy.
He was not inclined to go out to a theatre or bar, and the men he knew in town, mostly journalists, were all hard at work now in Fleet Street.
The sensation of _ennui_ was new to him, and at first quite overbearing.
Gobion was in personal matters strong-willed, and after a time this trained faculty of will helped him, and, with an effort almost heroic in its strength, he sat down at the table and began to review a book for _The Pilgrim_. It was a collection of essays by a well-known priest on some doctrinal aspects of church teaching that he had before him, and it was sent to him partly because he was known to have had some connection with the High Church party, and the editor a.s.sumed that he would have enough superficial knowledge of the subject to write a clever and flippant review.
_The Pilgrim_ had been bought at a low ebb in its fortunes by its present editor, James Heath, for a thousand pounds, lock, stock, and barrel. Before it came into his hands it was an unsavoury little print, which published little else but impressionist criticisms of the music-halls and fulsome reviews of evil books, under the direction of a man who was a personified animal pa.s.sion roughly clothed in flesh.
Now it was all changed. The tone of _The Pilgrim_ was immoral as before, and the column headed "The Pilgrim"s Scrip" as grossly personal as ever, but the personalities were more artistic, the immorality the immorality of culture.
The paper was never low. The sale was good, for all the young men and women who considered themselves clever, and who, under the comprehensive shield of "soul," sucked poison from strange flowers, bought it and quoted it.
Heath was smart and cynical in his conduct of the paper, though in private life he lived at Putney, collected stamps, and read Miss Braddon"s novels to his wife after dinner. He knew quite well that realism was mechanism, and he never welcomed photography as art, but as the people who bought his literary wares did not understand these things he never enlightened them, which was natural.
The book that Gobion was reviewing he had entrusted to him willingly. He was an Oxford man himself, and still kept up some communication with his friends there, and he had heard indirectly that Gobion had received various benefits from the High Church party. His knowledge of Gobion taught him that he would do a delightfully clever and malicious review.
The clergyman who had written the book was a rather noisy Anglican divine, who preached the gospel of unity in art and religion at the top of his voice. He deprecated and eloquently denounced the new literature of the day. As _The Pilgrim_ was the outward and visible head of what Canon Emeric denounced as very little short of devilish, Heath was naturally anxious that the review should, in journalistic phrase, "crab"
the sale of the book among his readers.
Now this Canon Emeric had met Gobion at a garden party, and found him well informed in the history of his campaign against art for art"s sake.
Finding that Gobion agreed with his views, he had asked him as a special favour to call on his son, who had just come up to Christchurch from Marlborough. Gobion did call, and asked the youth to meet Sturtevant, and the poor boy, dazzled by being in the society of men of whom he heard everyone talking, made a fool of himself and came to utter grief, much to the pecuniary benefit of Condamine, Sturtevant, and Gobion. It was a disgraceful affair, and though some rather acrimonious correspondence had pa.s.sed between the Canon and Gobion, the matter had been hushed up.
When Gobion got well into his work the ennui pa.s.sed away and he worked hard, turning out a very clever and caustic review. To the pleasure of creation, always a keen one with him, was added the delight of writing something which, if he saw it, would pain his adversary grievously. And Gobion meant to take very good care that he _did_ see it.
He ended the column by saying:--
"Whether these essays were worth writing is of course a question which lies between Canon Emeric and his publisher. That they are not worth reading we have no hesitation in saying.
"If anyone were so childish as to take the advice given in this book seriously, he would find that all the time he could spare from worship he would spend in neglecting the obligations of religion."
It took him about two hours to produce the criticism in its finished state, and then he began to have a last smoke before going to bed. As with so many men, he found that at no time did his ideas come so rapidly, or shape themselves so well, as during the smoking of that last cigarette.
The fire was blazing, and he drew his chair up closer, leaning back and enjoying in every nerve a moment of intense physical ease.
There was no more innocent picture to be found in London than the well-furnished room lit by the dancing firelight, with the handsome young man in the chair lazily watching the blue cigarette smoke slowly twisting itself into strange fantastic shapes. The powers of Asmodeus were here a failure.
Next day, when he had written to his Oxford friends and to Marjorie Lovering, his sweetheart in the country, he went to _The Pilgrim_ office with his review and saw Heath. The two editorial rooms were on the second floor looking out into the Strand. Big bare places littered with paper, cigarette ends, and type-written copy, with none of the tape machines, telephones, and fire-calls that are found in the offices of a daily. Heath was seated at a writing-table "making up" the issue for the week, while his a.s.sistant, a man named Wild, was looking through a batch of cuttings from Romeike"s in the hope of finding what he called "spicy pars" for the front page. Gobion was well received, and after he had explained that he was going to stay in town, and was open for any amount of work, he was offered a permanent salary of two pounds ten shillings a week, to do half the reviewing for the paper. Naturally he accepted at once, and was pleased at his good luck, for though the pay was small it was regular.
Heath was a very large, fat man, with no hair on his face, and a quick, nervous smile which ended high in the pendant flabbiness of his cheeks.
He was well and fashionably dressed in dark grey, the frock coat, tight-fitting as it was, making his vast size and huge hips seem the more noticeable. He was smoking a cigar, and gave Gobion one.
It was lunch time when the bargain was concluded, and Gobion, Wild, and Heath went out together. Gobion, who, obeying the precept of Iago, had put money in his purse, asked them to lunch with him at Romano"s. Heath laughed.
"My _dear_ Yardly Gobion, lunch at Romano"s! No thanks; it would cost you five pounds and be far too respectable. No, you shall certainly pay for the lunch--eh Wild?--but I will show you where to get it."
He turned up a side street and entered a small court, not far from the stage door of the Lyceum, at the end of which was a door. They went in and found a suite of three largish rooms opening one out of the other.
The first was fitted up as a restaurant, while the other two were smoking-lounges with a bar in each. Comfort, brutal unaesthetic comfort, was the most obvious thing in all three rooms. The chairs were comfortable, the carpets soft, while big cheery fires burnt in the open grates. No one was in the dining-room, but through the half-open curtains, which separated the lounge from the dining-room, came s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation, the sound of soda-water corks, and the shrill laughter of a London barmaid, than which few things are more unpleasant.
The three journalists sat down at a table by the fire, and a waiter brought the menu.
Mr. Heath"s rather impa.s.sive face lighted up, and he read the list eagerly. Eating and drinking were of tremendous importance to him.
The food was ordered, and Gobion asked them what they would drink.
Heath, with a sublime disregard for bulk, ordered lager; the other two, simple "halves" of bitter. While the meal was in progress a man came in from a side door. Heath called him, introducing him to Gobion as Mr.
Hamilton, the owner of the place.
Wild explained to Gobion that he was now free of the "copy shop." "You see," said he, "this is a place almost entirely used by journalists of a non-political kind. Everyone knows everyone else, and Hamilton knows us all by name. An outsider who wanders in here is not encouraged to repeat his visit, unless he is vouched for by someone, for the place is really more like a club than a public bar."
After lunch they went into the lounge, which was filled with men, mostly young, who all seemed to know one another by their Christian names.
Heath was hailed cordially.
A man sitting on the table stood up, and said theatrically, "Enter the Pilgrim, arch-druid of the loving Mountain--slow music. Well, my fat friend, what wicked scandal do you come fresh from concocting? What lewd pars are even now in the copy box at 162, Strand?"
The Pilgrim grinned. "Gentlemen, let me introduce my latest permanent recruit, Mr. Yardly Gobion. He has just been sent down from Exeter."
Gobion was welcomed as a brother, and in half an hour had taken up his favourite position on the hearthrug.
Exerting himself to the utmost, he found he could produce much the same impression as he did in Oxford, and he was a p.r.o.nounced success in perhaps one of the most critical coteries in London.
They were critics of everything, criticism was in their veins, they lived on it; they were "the men who had failed in literature and art."
Every now and then a man or two on an evening paper would come in hastily for a drink, and there was a quick interchange of technicalities, a chorus of experts, sharp, clipped, allusive; the latest wire from the Central News, the newest story from the clubs, the smartest headline of the afternoon.
Gobion soon caught the note and was voted an acquisition. Although he was of a somewhat finer grain than most of these men, he recognized the type instantly. Cheap cynicism was the keynote of most of the conversation, and his lighter side revelled in it. Most complex of all men, he could suck pleasure from every shade of feeling. Lord Tennyson"s beautiful line: "A glorious devil large in heart and brain," fitted him exactly. With his intellect he might have been a saint, instead of which he was sublime in nothing whatever. With the face of an angel, he loved goodness for its beauty, and sin for its excitement.
Before he left the "copy shop" he had picked up several good stories, and saw his way to at least half a dozen scandalous paragraphs, which he would send to a provincial paper with which he had some connection.
He went away, being pressed to come regularly, and Mr. Hamilton met him going out, expressing his pleasure at seeing any "friend of Mister Heath"s and member of the fourth hestate, "oping as the pleasure will be repeated." Not being a journalist, the worthy landlord had a high opinion of the press.
Gobion left with Wild, and they strolled down towards Fleet Street.
"Drop in at my place some evening, will you?" he said to his companion.
"Thanks very much. I will, certainly. You must come and look me up when you"ve time. I am at present sharing a flat with Blanche Huntley, whom you may have heard of. I suppose you don"t mind?"
"I, my dear fellow? Rather not; delighted to come. Do you turn off here?"
"Yes, I"m going to the Temple station; good-bye."
Gobion had heard of Miss Huntley. "How very nasty some men are in their tastes," he thought; "it"s all rather horrid. I"ll go to evensong somewhere." Not the better, but the finer side of him woke up, and he felt the necessity of a quieting and poetic influence to counteract the clever sordidness of the afternoon. He took a cab to Pimlico, where he knew churches were plentiful, and after a little search found what he wanted not far from Victoria Station.
The church was only lit by the candles on the high altar and a solitary corona over the stall of the clergyman. Gobion was quite alone. The shadows and gloom of the building were thrown into a deeper gloom, an added mystery, by the radiance above. A young priest, of the earnest Cuddesdon type, walked in all alone, his steps echoing mournfully on the flagged chancel floor. He gave a slight start of pleasure when he saw that there was a congregation, a young man, too!--the poor curate had never before seen such a phenomenon at a weekday evensong.
They said the psalms together, Gobion"s sweet voice echoing down the long, dark aisles.