I was seeking Lea--he was not at home. The quarter was honeycombed with the homes of people one knows; of people one used to know, excellent young men who wrote for the papers, who sub-edited papers, who designed posters, who were always just the same. One forgot them for a year or two, one came across them again and found them just the same--still writing for the same papers, still sub-editing the same papers, designing the same posters. I was in the mood to rediscover them in the privacies of their hearths, with the same excellent wives making fair copies of the same ma.n.u.scripts, with the same gaiety of the same indifferent whiskey, brown or pale or suspicious-looking, in heavy, square, cut-gla.s.s stoppered decanters, and with the same indifferent Virginian tobacco at the same level in the same jars.
I was in the mood for this stability, for the excellent household article that was their view of life and literature. I wanted to see it again, to hear again how it was filling the unvarying, allotted columns of the daily, the weekly, or the monthly journals. I wanted to breathe again this mild atmosphere where there are no longer hopes or fears.
But, alas!...
I rang bell after bell of that gloomy central London district. You know what happens. One pulls the k.n.o.b under the name of the person one seeks--pulls it three, or, it may be, four times in vain. One rings the housekeeper"s bell; it reverberates, growing fainter and fainter, gradually stifled by a cavernous subterranean atmosphere. After an age a head peeps round the opening door, the head of a hopeless anachronism, the head of a widow of early Victorian merit, or of an orphan of incredible age. One asks for So-and-so--he"s out; for Williams--he"s expecting an increase of family, and has gone into the country with madame. And Waring? Oh, he"s gone no one knows where, and Johnson who used to live at Number 44 only comes up to town on Tuesdays now. I exhausted the possibilities of that part of Bloomsbury, the possibilities of variety in the types of housekeepers. The rest of London divided itself into bands--into zones. Between here and Kensington the people that I knew could not be called on after dinner, those who lived at Chiswick and beyond were hyperborean--one was bound by the exigencies of time. It was ten o"clock as I stood reflecting on a doorstep--on Johnson"s doorstep. I must see somebody, must talk to somebody, before I went to bed in the cheerless room at the club. It was true I might find a political stalwart in the smoking-room--but that was a last resort, a desperate and ignominious _pis aller_.
There was Fox, I should find him at the office. But it needed a change of tone before I could contemplate with equanimity the meeting of that individual. I had been preparing myself to confront all the ethically excellent young men and Fox was, ethically speaking, far from excellent, middle-aged, rubicund, leery--a free lance of genius. I made the necessary change in my tone of mind and ran him to earth.
The Watteau room was further enlivened by the introduction of a scarlet plush couch of sumptuous design. By its side stood a couple of electric lights. The virulent green of their shades made the colours of the be-shepherded wall-panels appear almost unearthly, and threw impossible shadows on the deal part.i.tion. Round the couch stood chairs with piles of papers neatly arranged on them; round it, on the floor, were more papers lying like the leaves of autumn that one sings of. On it lay Fox, enveloped in a Shetland shawl--a good shawl that was the only honest piece of workmanship in the torn-tawdry place. Fox was as rubicund as ever, but his features were noticeably peaked and there were heavy lines under his eyes--lines cast into deep shadow by the light by which he was reading. I entered unannounced, and was greeted by an indifferent upward glance that changed into one of something like pleasure as he made out my features in the dim light.
"Hullo, you old country hawbuck," he said, with spasmodic jocularity; "I"m uncommon glad to see you." He came to a jerky close, with an indrawing of his breath. "I"m about done," he went on. "Same old thing--sciatica. Took me just after I got here this afternoon; sent out one of the messengers to buy me a sofa, and here I"ve been ever since.
Well, and what"s brought you up--don"t answer, I know all about it. I"ve got to keep on talking until this particular spasm"s over, or else I shall scream and disturb the flow of Soane"s leader. Well, and now you"ve come, you"ll stop and help me to put the _Hour_ to bed, won"t you? And then you can come and put me to bed."
He went on talking at high pressure, exaggerating his expressions, heightening his humorous touches with punctuations of rather wild laughter. At last he came to a stop with a half suppressed "Ah!" and a long indrawing of the breath.
"That"s over," he said. "Give me a drop of brandy--there"s a good fellow." I gave him his nip. Then I explained to him that I couldn"t work for the _Hour_; that I wasn"t on terms with de Mersch.
"Been dropping money over him?" he asked, cheerfully. I explained a little more--that there was a lady.
"Oh, it"s _that_," Fox said. "The man _is_ a fool ... But anyhow Mersch don"t count for much in this particular show. He"s no money in it even, so you may put your pride in your pocket, or wherever you keep it. It"s all right. Straight. He"s only the small change."
"But," I said, "everyone says; you said yourself...."
"To be sure," he answered. "But you don"t think that _I_ play second fiddle to a bounder of that calibre. Not really?"
He looked at me with a certain seriousness. I remembered, as I had remembered once before, that Fox was a personality--a power. I had never realised till then how entirely--fundamentally--different he was from any other man that I knew. He was surprising enough to have belonged to another race. He looked at me, not as if he cared whether I gave him his due or no, but as if he were astonished at my want of perception of the fact. He let his towzled head fall back upon the plush cushions. "You might kick him from here to Greenland for me," he said; "I wouldn"t weep. It suits me to hold him up, and a kicking might restore his equilibrium. I"m sick of him--I"ve told him so. I knew there _was_ a woman. But don"t you worry; _I"m_ the man here."
"If that"s the case ..." I said.
"Oh, that"s it," he answered.
I helped him to put the paper to bed; took some of the work off his hands. It was all part of the getting back to life; of the resuming of rusty armour; and I wanted to pa.s.s the night. I was not unused to it, as it happened. Fox had had several of these fits during my year, and during most of them I had helped him through the night; once or twice for three on end. Once I had had entire control for a matter of five nights. But they gave me a new idea of Fox, those two or three weird hours that night. It was as if I had never seen him before. The attacks grew more virulent as the night advanced. He groaned and raved, and said things--oh, the most astounding things in gibberish that upset one"s nerves and everything else. At the height he sang hymns, and then, as the fits pa.s.sed, relapsed into incredible clear-headedness. It gave me, I say, a new idea of Fox. It was as if, for all the time I had known him, he had been playing a part, and that only now, in the delirium of his pain, in the madness into which he drank himself, were fragments of the real man thrown to the surface. I grew, at last, almost afraid to be alone with him in the dead small hours of the morning, and longed for the time when I could go to bed among the uninspiring, marble-topped furniture of my club.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At noon of the next day I gave Fox his look in at his own flat. He was stretched upon a sofa--it was evident that I was to take such of his duties as were takeable. He greeted me with words to that effect.
"Don"t go filling the paper with your unbreeched geniuses," he said, genially, "and don"t overwork yourself. There"s really nothing to do, but you"re being there will keep that little beast Evans from getting too c.o.c.k-a-hoop. He"d like to jerk me out altogether; thinks they"d get on just as well without me."
I expressed in my manner general contempt for Evans, and was taking my leave.
"Oh, and--" Fox called after me. I turned back. "The Greenland mail ought to be in to-day. If Callan"s contrived to get his flood-gates open, run his stuff in, there"s a good chap. It"s a feature and all that, you know."
"I suppose Soane"s to have a look at it," I asked.
"Oh, yes," he answered; "but tell him to keep strictly to old Cal"s lines--rub that into him. If he were to get drunk and run in some of his own tips it"d be awkward. People are expecting Cal"s stuff. Tell you what: you take him out to lunch, eh? Keep an eye on the supplies, and ram it into him that he"s got to stick to Cal"s line of argument."
"Soane"s as bad as ever, then?" I asked.
"Oh," Fox answered, "he"ll be all right for the stuff if you get that one idea into him." A prolonged and acute fit of pain seized him. I fetched his man and left him to his rest.
At the office of the _Hour_ I was greeted by the handing to me of a proof of Callan"s ma.n.u.script. Evans, the man across the screen, was the immediate agent.
"I suppose it"s got to go in, so I had it set up," he said.
"Oh, of course it"s got to go in," I answered. "It"s to go to Soane first, though."
"Soane"s not here yet," he answered. I noted the tone of sub-acid pleasure in his voice. Evans would have enjoyed a fiasco.
"Oh, well," I answered, nonchalantly, "there"s plenty of time. You allow s.p.a.ce on those lines. I"ll send round to hunt Soane up."
I felt called to be upon my mettle. I didn"t much care about the paper, but I had a definite antipathy to being done by Evans--by a mad Welshman in a stubborn fit. I knew what was going to happen; knew that Evans would feign inconceivable stupidity, the sort of black stupidity that is at command of individuals of his primitive race. I was in for a day of petty worries. In the circ.u.mstances it was a thing to be thankful for; it dragged my mind away from larger issues. One has no time for brooding when one is driving a horse in a jibbing fit.
Evans was grimly conscious that I was moderately ignorant of technical details; he kept them well before my eyes all day long.
At odd moments I tried to read Callan"s article. It was impossible. It opened with a description of the squalor of the Greenlander"s life, and contained tawdry pa.s.sages of local colour.
I knew what was coming. This was the view of the Greenlanders of pre-Merschian Greenland, elaborated, after the manner of Callan--the Special Commissioner--so as to bring out the glory and virtue of the work of regeneration. Then in a gush of superlatives the work itself would be described. I knew quite well what was coming, and was temperamentally unable to read more than the first ten lines.
Everything was going wrong. The printers developed one of their sudden crazes for asking idiotic questions. Their messengers came to Evans, Evans sent them round the pitch-pine screen to me. "Mr. Jackson wants to know----"
The fourth of the messengers that I had despatched to Soane returned with the news that Soane would arrive at half-past nine. I sent out in search of the strongest coffee that the city afforded. Soane arrived. He had been ill, he said, very ill. He desired to be fortified with champagne. I produced the coffee.
Soane was the son of an Irish peer. He had magnificent features--a little blurred nowadays--and a remainder of the grand manner. His nose was a marvel of cla.s.sic workmanship, but the floods of time had reddened and speckled it--not offensively, but ironically; his hair was turning grey, his eyes were bloodshot, his heavy moustache rather ragged. He inspired one with the respect that one feels for a man who has lived and does not care a curse. He had a weird intermittent genius that made it worth Fox"s while to put up with his lapses and his brutal snubs.
I produced the coffee and pointed to the sofa of the night before.
"d.a.m.n it," he said, "I"m ill, I tell you; I want ..."
"Exactly!" I cut in. "You want a rest, old fellow. Here"s Cal"s article.
We want something special about it. If you don"t feel up to it I"ll send round to Jenkins."
"d.a.m.n Jenkins," he said; "I"m up to it."
"You understand," I said, "you"re to write strictly on Callan"s lines.
Don"t insert any information from extraneous sources. And make it as slashing as you like--on those lines."
He grunted in acquiescence. I left him lying on the sofa, drinking the coffee. I had tenderly arranged the lights for him as Fox had arranged them the night before. As I went out to get my dinner I was comfortably aware of him, holding the slips close to his muddled eyes and philosophically d.a.m.ning the nature of things.
When I returned, Soane, from his sofa, said something that I did not catch--something about Callan and his article.
"Oh, for G.o.d"s sake," I answered, "don"t worry me. Have some more coffee and stick to Cal"s line of argument. That"s what Fox said. I"m not responsible."
"Deuced queer," Soane muttered. He began to scribble with a pencil. From the tone of his voice I knew that he had reached the precise stage at which something brilliant--the real thing of its kind--might be expected.