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 passed between the Canon and Gobion, the matter had been hushed up.
When Gobion got well into his work the ennui passed 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 assistant, 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 unæsthetic 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 snatches 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 impassive 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 pronounced 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.
The clergyman felt an instinctive sympathy. He saw that Gobion was feeling to the full the influence of the hour and place, the musical cadence of the verse, and he responded in his turn with a newer sense of the poetry of worship, throwing deep feeling into his voice. It was a keen, æsthetic pleasure to both of them, though the priest felt something more, but it put Gobion on good terms with himself at once. He had roused emotion of a sort, and the rousing seemed to sweep away the contamination of the day.
He bowed low to the distant crucifix on the altar on leaving the building, as a man who had tasted a sweet morsel, with shadowy and pleasant thoughts – the sense of a finer glory.
CHAPTER IV
THE CAMPAIGN
When a few unconsidered trifles have been thrown out at score, to a middle-aged business man the world is a bundle of shares and bills receivable. To most young men it is a girl or several girls. For some girls it is a young man. For some other people it is a church, a bar, a coterie – for Yardly Gobion it was himself. Realizing this in every nerve, for the next few weeks he devoted himself to making acquaintances and impressions.
He did no writing beyond his weekly contribution to The Pilgrim, but went abroad and looked around, making himself a niche before he essayed anything further. He managed to get about to one or two rather decent houses, and greatly consolidated his position at the "copy shop." His idea was to keep quiet till Sturtevant came up to town, for he thought that very little could stand against such a combination. Accordingly he had a pleasant time for the next few weeks. His work did not take him more than four hours a day, and now that his circle of acquaintance was so much enlarged there was always plenty of amusement. He could always enjoy the small change of transient emotion by a visit to the church at Pimlico, where in the lonely services he felt (sometimes for nearly an hour) a sorrow at his life and a yearning for goodness.
His mental attitude on these occasions was a strange one, and one only found in people possessing the artistic temperament; for he seemed to stand aloof, and mourn over the grossness of some dear friend; he could detach his mind from his own personality, and feel an awful pity for his own dying soul. Then after these luxurious abandonments, these delightful lapses into religious sentimentality, he would seize on pleasure as a monkey seizes on a nut, finding an added zest in the pursuit of dissipation. One thing in some small degree he noticed, and that was that this alternation of attitude was slightly weakening his powers of taste. The sharpest edge of enjoyment seemed blunted.
One night, about a month after his arrival in town, he dined out in Chelsea with some friends, driving back to his rooms about eleven o'clock, very much in love with himself. On this particular evening he had not tried to be smart or clever. There had been several other ultra-modern young men there; and seeing that the hostess – a charming person – was wearied of their modernity and smart sayings, he affected quite another style, pleasing her by his deferential and chivalrous manner, the simplicity of his conversation. A fresh instance of his power always tickled his vanity, and he drove home down the Strand, his soul big with a hideous egoism.
He paid the driver liberally, for he was generous in all small matters, and opening the door with his latch-key went upstairs. He entered the room, and to his immeasurable surprise found it brilliantly lit with gas and candles. On the table was a half-empty bottle of champagne and a bedroom tumbler.
In a chair on the right side of the fireplace sat Sturtevant in his shirtsleeves, smoking a cigarette, while on the other side of the fire was a young lady dressed in the van of the fashion, also smoking. Her hat was off, and her hair was metallically golden.
"Where – the – devil – did you spring from?" said Gobion.
"My good friend – not before a lady, please," said Sturtevant with a grin.
The lady waved her cigarette in the air. "Spit it out, old man; don't mind me!" she said.
Gobion looked helplessly from the lady to Sturtevant and back again. These things were beyond him.
"Allow me," said Sturtevant. "Mr. Yardly Gobion, Miss – er – I don't know your name, my dear."
"Me?" said the young lady. "My name don't matter. I'm off; so long, boys."
"Will you explain?" said Gobion. "I am rather bewildered."
"Well, it's in this way. I got up to town about six this evening, and went to the Temple. I found my chambers in an excessively filthy state, with no fire, my laundress not expecting me till to-morrow. I dined at the 'Monico,' and met that damsel in Piccadilly; and, in short, we have been spending the evening under your hospitable roof, aided by a bottle of fizz from the 'Grecian.'"
"I see. Well, if you don't mind, old man, don't bring that sort in. I like them anywhere but in my rooms. A demoiselle de trottoir should stay – "
"On the trottoir– quite so. I won't offend again; only I wanted someone to amuse me, and I expected you'd be late. Now look here; can you put me up for the night? my chambers are in a horrible mess."
"Oh, I should think so; I'll ask the landlady."
At half-past eleven the next morning Gobion got up, after some trouble getting Sturtevant out of bed; and they began a composite meal which the president called "brunch" soon after twelve.
Some letters were waiting. One was a pathetic appeal from an Oxford tailor for "something on account." Gobion said "damn" (the Englishman's shortest prayer), and threw it into the fire. Another was a letter from Scott, strong, earnest, and loving. He passed it to Sturtevant, who read it and said, "Man seems to have kept it a little too long in a hot place. Trifle high, don't you think?"
The third ran: —
"My Dear Caradoc,
"Marjorie and I are coming up for a fortnight to stay with my mother in Kensington. We hope to see a good deal of you, as you say you have deserted Oxford for a time to take up some literary work in London.
"Marjorie tells me to say that you must meet our train – the 4.30 at Victoria, but don't put yourself out.
"Yours affectionately,"Gerald Lovering.""Hallo," said Gobion, "my girl's coming up!"
"Didn't know you had one; has she any money?"
"A little, I think, and her father looks on me as an eligible; he doesn't know I've been sent down, and I don't intend he shall. I have to meet the 4.30 this afternoon."
"Well, I wanted to talk over our plans some time to-day. When will you come to my chambers?"
"This evening, I should think. I must work till four; I've a novel to do for The Pilgrim, and I've not read a line yet."
"Oh, don't bother about that. 'Smell the paper-knife' instead; let's go to the 'copy shop.'"
"Afraid I can't; I must do it. Look here, I will come round about ten this evening. Don't be drunk."
"Right oh! I'll go back now and get my rooms into some sort of order."
He rolled a cigarette and roamed about the room, looking for his hat. "It's gone to the devil, I think," he said.
"In that case you'll find it again some day. There it is, though – under the sofa. I thought you didn't believe in the devil."
"Satan may be dead, as the hedonists think; but I expect someone still carries on the business."
When he had gone Gobion got to work, and wrote steadily till three, when he went to the "copy shop" to get something to eat. They kept him waiting some little time. Albert, the waiter, who was supposed to be smart in his profession, on this occasion hid his talent (no doubt in a napkin), and Gobion had only a minute to spare when he got to Victoria.
The train curved into the station and pulled up slowly. He made for the door of a first-class carriage where he saw Mr. Lovering getting out. The parson was a little man, all forehead and nose. When Gobion came up he was struggling with a bundle of rugs and umbrellas.
"Ah, dear boy, you have come then. So good of you. Get Marjorie out while I find our luggage."
Then Marjorie came down from the carriage, glowing with health and spirits, her dark eyes flashing when they saw Gobion.
"Dearest," he said. She put her little gloved hand into his, looking up in his face, while his blood ran faster through his veins.
"Caradoc, dear, it is so jolly to see you again; we are going to stay in London for over a fortnight, and you shall take me about everywhere. Oh, here's father."
The little man bustled up. He was one of those dreadful people whom a railway journey excites to a species of frenzy. He ran up and down the platform, dancing round the truck which held his baggage, holding a piece of paper in his hand, muttering, "One black bag – yes; two corded trunks – yes; one hat-box – yes; two boxes of ferns – yes; one bundle of rugs – y – NO! Marjorie! where are the rugs? Gobion, I know I had the rugs after we got out – a big bundle with a striped red and green one on the outside."
"You're carrying it, aren't you, Mr. Lovering?"
"Dear me! so I am. How very stupid of me! Now if you will get a cab I should be so obliged – a four-wheeler, mind!"
Gobion secured one and came back, standing by Marjorie while the luggage was hoisted on the roof.
"I do hate a silly old four-wheeler!" she said.
"Never mind, dearest, soon we'll go about in a hansom together to your heart's content – jump in! May I call to-morrow, Mr. Lovering?"
"Yes, yes, dear boy – you know the address. Good-bye for the present."
Gobion left the station with a sense of bien-être. He remembered that he was not due at the Temple till ten, wondering what he should do with himself. Just as he was going out of the gates that rail off the station-yard from the street, a cab dashed up, the occupant evidently in haste to catch a train. Unfortunately, just as it was coming into the yard, the horse swerved and fell, and the man inside was shot out past Gobion, his head striking the curbstone with fearful force. Death was almost instantaneous. Gobion rushed up and lifted him in his arms, but it was of no use. In a short time two policemen came up, and after taking Gobion's name as a witness of the occurrence, placed the body on a stretcher, moving off with it followed by the crowd. The whole affair did not last ten minutes.
Gobion stood by himself staring at the blood on his clothes. He was moving away, when he saw the card-case of the dead man was lying in the gutter, where it had been jerked when he fell. He picked it up, giving a start of surprise when he saw the name Sir William Railton, a prominent member of the government in power.
All the horror of the scene passed away in a flash. He was a journalist pure and simple now, with an hour's start of any man in London. Hurriedly wiping his clothes, he ran over the road to Tinelli's, an Italian restaurant, and, ordering pens, paper, and a flask of Chianti, wrote furiously a brief account, about a quarter of a column long. He made five copies, and then got into a cab and drove hard to Fleet Street, leaving his card and an account at the news-office of each of the big dailies.
Then came the reaction, and he staggered home, faint with hard work and the horror of what he had seen. He put on another suit, not feeling himself till he had roused his spirits with a copious brandy and soda.
This instinct of the journalist is a curious thing; while it lasts it is a hot fever, brutal almost in its vehemence. A man possessed by it forgets everything but the fierce joy of his work, and a deep exaltation in the possession of exclusive news; but the reaction is bad for the nerves.
Sturtevant's chambers in the Temple were distinctly comfortable. A large room panelled in white, with doors opening round it into bedrooms. A gay Japanese screen protected a cosy corner by the fire, fitted up with a lounge, an armchair, two little tables, and a standard lamp. It was all more elaborate than his Oxford rooms, because at Oxford he was too well known for his position to depend on externals – while in London they were part of his stock-in-trade. It was a room in which laziness seemed a virtue, with numberless contrivances for comfort. Corners for elbows, shaded reading lamps, the best of tobacco, and a speaking-tube from the fireside to the outer passage of the chambers, so that on hearing a knock, Sturtevant could tell an unwelcome visitor that he was not at home, but was expected back about five, without opening the door.
"Now," he said, when they had settled down comfortably, "we shall be quite undisturbed all night. We have a good fire, tobacco, and drink of the best; let us seriously map out our little campaign."
"Take the evening papers first then," said Gobion. "Now there is the Moon, an organ devoted to playfully redressing wrongs. We will do an article for it on 'How Barmaids Live.' We can describe the horrors of their lot: a sleeping-room, 12 feet by 12, with six girls in it, and a window that won't open; the insults they are exposed to, et cetera."
"Do you think that will take?"
"Yes, and I'll tell you why. The ordinary beast who reads the Moon loves anything about a barmaid; they are his society."
"Where shall we get our facts?"
"Invent them, of course; there is no need for investigation. We can make it much more interesting without. Put it down: 'Barmaid —Moon.' Now we come to the Resounder. We must try quite a different line. It's a newspaper in a strait waistcoat, so to speak, and it's just been subsidized by the anti-gambling people. How would 'The Gambling Evil at the Universities' do? We could easily make some astounding revelations, and your name as president of the Union would have weight with the editor. What else is there?"
"Well, there's the Evening Times and the Wire," said Sturtevant.
"Yes; I think with them we must do short stories. I have three or four MSS. not yet printed which I will revise. All these things shall go in under your name, and I will invent two-stick pars about celebrities, and send three or four to each paper. For instance —
'It is not generally known that the Queen has a great liking for that very plebeian dish, tripe and onions. Indeed, so fond is Her Majesty of this succulent preparation, that a few sheep are always kept in the home paddocks of each of the royal residences to be in readiness if Her Majesty should suddenly express her desire. They are mountain bred, and are brought from the Highlands of Scotland as soon as they can travel without their dams.'
The British public love this kind of thing."
As Gobion suggested an article, one of them put it down on a piece of paper with the name of the journal to which they proposed to send it.
