The Project Gutenberg EBook of People of Position, by Stanley Portal Hyatt This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: People of Position Author: Stanley Portal Hyatt Illustrator: H. Richard Boehm Release Date: June 30, 2009 [EBook #29274] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PEOPLE OF POSITION *** Produced by Peter Vachuska, Julia Miller, Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Note: A Table of Contents has been added. PEOPLE OF POSITION [Pg i] [Pg ii] LALAGE PEOPLE OF POSITION BY STANLEY PORTAL HYATT Author of "Little Brown Brother," "End of the Road," etc. With a Frontispiece by H. RICHARD BOEHM NEW YORK WESSELS & BISSELL CO. 1910 [Pg iii] Copyright, 1910, By WESSELS & BISSELL CO. September THE PREMIER PRESS NEW YORK CONTENTS PROLOGUE CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVI CHAPTER XVII CHAPTER XVIII CHAPTER XIX CHAPTER XX CHAPTER XXI CHAPTER XXII [Pg iv] CHAPTER XXIII CHAPTER XXIV CHAPTER XXV CHAPTER XXVI CHAPTER XXVII CHAPTER XXVIII CHAPTER XXIX CHAPTER XXX CHAPTER XXXI PROLOGUE Grierson refilled the magazine of his rifle carefully—when you are dealing with South American patriots it is better to take no chances, even though the enemy has retreated—then he wiped a couple of half-dried blood spots off his cheek, and, after that, went over to where lay the body of the man from whom that same blood had spurted. For a full minute he stood very still, gazing with sombre eyes at the kindly face which seemed to be smiling back at him even in death; then he knelt down, and, with infinite gentleness, smoothed the ruffled hair, arranged the collar so as to hide the bullet hole in the bronzed throat, and crossed the hands on the breast. When he got up again his face was twitching strangely, seeing which, the American officer, who had come up behind him, suddenly became busy with his men. It was one of those stories which seldom get into the newspapers, possibly because they are so utterly unimportant in themselves—a ragged band of half-breeds robbing and murdering in the name of liberty; a landing party of marines from the nearest warship, which happened to be American; and a futile little fight ending, as usual, in the defeat of the brigands. Only this time, an Englishman, who had gone out with the marines, had been killed; and now Grierson, his friend, was trying to realise the fact. "He was awfully good to me, the whitest man that ever stepped. I met him down the coast a year ago—my luck was right out—and he brought me along with him. I hadn't had a proper meal for days, much less a smoke, and he'd only my word for who I was. Yet he risked it, and I've been here ever since." Grierson, who had been walking in silence beside the marine officer, spoke suddenly. The American nodded sympathetically. "It was hard luck to be killed by a rotten Dago outfit like that. Whenever you get a coloured man talking about liberty you know he's just prospecting round for a chance to break the Eighth Commandment." Grierson muttered a curse; then, as if he wanted to confide in someone, possibly as a relief to his own feelings, "His partner will be here in a week's time; he was on his way already. When he comes I shall clear out and go home." Captain Harben nodded again. "Meaning England?" he asked. "Yes, England—London. I've had ten years knocking about the world—China, India, Australia, and all round this forsaken continent; and the sum total of what I've got to show for it is the fever and a couple of knife scars in my back —patriots again, one Hindu, one Peruvian. So I think I had better go home and begin afresh—if I can." And he gave a bitter little laugh. The American glanced sharply at the tall, thin figure and haggard face. When they had started out that morning to drive the saviours of their country out of the spirit stores they were looting, Grierson had struck him as a keen youngster with a rather infectious laugh, and his appreciation had been increased by the way in which the other had dropped a running insurgent at four hundred yards' range; now, however, the captain found himself wondering whether, after all, it was not too late for his companion to talk of beginning life afresh. At dinner that night he expressed his doubts to the Consul, who shook his head. "Locke, the man they killed to-day, told me young Grierson had been through a pretty rough time, touched rock bottom. He was going into the British Army, but had to throw it up, and went out to the Orient for some Company which failed soon after, leaving him stranded. Since then everything he had been in has turned out wrong; and now this has gone.... Queer how some men do get the cards dealt them that way.... He's clever, writes very well, and might have done something at it. Locke's [Pg v] [Pg vi] [Pg vii] [Pg viii] death will be an ugly blow to him." Being a kindly man and none too successful himself, he sighed in sympathy, then mixed another whisky and soda, and passed on to official matters. A little later Captain Harben harked back to the former question. "He's got plenty of pluck. He was all there when it came to a fight. I like him." "So do I," the other answered, "only I guess pluck of that sort won't help him much in England, and you know, or at least I know, that a fellow who's knocked about a lot doesn't suit civilisation, or civilisation doesn't suit him—put it which way you like, the result is the same. His nerves go under, somehow, and it ends so," nodding towards the whisky bottle. Meanwhile Grierson was sitting on the verandah of his dead employer's house staring out into the night, and trying to make plans for the future. "Whatever happens, I don't mean to starve again," he muttered. PEOPLE OF POSITION CHAPTER I Mrs. Marlow flicked a crumb off her dress with rather unnecessary care. "I've had a most annoying letter from Jimmy to-day. It came by the second post, after Henry had gone to the City, and quite upset me. His employer, Mr. Locke, has been killed in some disgraceful riot, and now Jimmy himself is coming home. Of course, in a way, I shall be glad to see him, and so will the rest of the family; but I know he's got no money, and no profession to fall back upon, and I cannot see what he is going to do for a living. If I asked him to do so, I have no doubt Henry would make a place for him in the office; but I am not going to have my husband burdened with my brother. Henry is too generous as it is; and the Stock Exchange is in such a fearful state now that it is difficult to make a bare living." She sighed heavily, and glanced round the expensively furnished drawing-room, as if wondering whether that abominable tendency towards suspicion on the part of the public, which was causing it to eschew all sorts of speculation, might not result in her losing the few luxuries she did possess. Her visitor, Mrs. Grimmer, wife of the junior partner in the well-known City firm of Hornaday, Grimes, and Grimmer, dried fruit brokers, nodded with an affectation of sympathy which she did not feel—the Marlows had a touring car and a motor-brougham, whilst she had only a one-horse carriage—and held out her cup to be refilled. She had known her hostess for a good many years, over thirty in fact, ever since she and May Marlow, who was then May Grierson and had thick flaxen plaits tied with blue ribbon, had met at their first children's party. Walter Grierson, the eldest of the family, now a City solicitor, had been eleven at that time, whilst May had been seven and Ida five; but Jimmy had not arrived until three summers later. Both Mr. and Mrs. Grierson belonged to eminently solid families, whose forebears for generations had looked to the City for their living. To them, the Square Mile stood for Respectability, just as the West End typified Laxity and Luxury; whilst outside these limits there was nothing but the Lower Classes. They ignored the Underworld, possibly because they knew nothing of it, more likely because it had no place in their Scheme of Things, the two main articles of their creed being that every man must choose an occupation early and abide by his choice, and that every good woman must stay at home. The logical result of these Grierson ancestors and their kind was the Victorian age, the exaltation of the Supremely Bad in Art and the Supremely Proper in mankind. Mrs. Grierson had been Victorian in the fullest sense of the word, and she had lived and died with all her principles intact, believing in the Evangelical Church, the respectability of wealth, and the evil tendencies of modern thought. On the other hand, some alien strain had crept into Mr. Grierson, and he had not accepted the family traditions in their entirety; in fact, both his own relatives and those of his wife had found much to criticise in his ideas. Had he been able to shake himself free of the family, he would have liked nothing better than to possess a ranch in America or a sheep station in New South Wales. All his life, he longed, in secret, for open air, and freedom, and the society of men whose interests did not stop at Temple Bar; but, in the end, Fate, in the form of a business bequeathed him by his father, sent him to the City, and he resolutely put his dreams on one side. The inevitable happened. He was essentially an honourable man, and, not understanding the meaning of Commercial Morality, he imagined that other men in the City were the same; consequently, he met the fate of he who of old went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, though there was no Samaritan to sympathise; rather otherwise, in fact, for his fellows shook their heads scornfully over his failure, whilst admiring the business capacity of those into whose hands his capital [Pg ix] [Pg 1] [Pg 2] [Pg 3] [Pg 4] had passed. The process of Mr. Grierson's ruin had been a comparatively slow one, the law requiring certain decencies to be observed in these matters; and his wife was dead, and his three elder children grown up and married, before the day when he discovered his own ruin, and took the quickest way out of the troubles of this world. He was mad, of course; everyone agreed on that point: not the least of the proofs being the fact that the only message he left was a letter for Jimmy, who was then at Sandhurst. The coroner had read the letter, and handed it back with a remark that it had no bearing whatsoever on the case; but no one else had seen it, nor had Jimmy given a hint of its contents to any of the family. It concerned him alone, he said. He would have to leave Sandhurst now and wanted to go abroad, and the others let him go, if not gladly, at least without any great regrets. They were all provided for; Walter was partner in a growing firm of solicitors; May had married Henry Marlow, a stockbroker; whilst Ida's husband was, if not actually in the City, at least very respectable, being a Northampton boot factor. They were very fond of Jimmy, genuinely fond of him, both from the purely correct point of view, as being their brother, and for his own happy disposition; but, none the less, there had always been a certain jealousy of their father's evident preference for him, a jealousy mingled with surprise, or even resentment, Jimmy being essentially unpractical, and almost unconventional. Moreover, they had never liked the idea of his going to Sandhurst. None of the family had been in the Service before; and it was a matter of common knowledge that no man could make financial headway in the Army. So, when, through Mr. Marlow's influence, the boy obtained a billet in China, the family heaved sighs of relief, and though, throughout the next ten years, his sisters kept up as regular a correspondence as his wanderings allowed, their home concerns and increasing families inevitably weakened their interest in him. They had their own circles, in which he had no part, though, on the other hand, when he did think of England, which was often during those years of hardship and disappointment, Jimmy always looked on them as essentially his own people, to whom, one day, he would return, having no one else.... Mrs. Grimmer sipped her tea slowly, and asked for further particulars concerning the absent wanderer. "Does he say what he proposes to do?" Mrs. Marlow shook her head. "No, only that he's sick of knocking about, and thinks he will try his luck at home. It's very selfish of him, because he has never been a credit to us; and, of course, naturally, everyone will know he's our brother." "What has he done that wasn't—wasn't quite the thing?" the visitor asked. Mrs. Marlow looked a little puzzled. "Well, I don't know that there's anything, exactly—at least that way. Only, Luke Chapman and her husband met him in Calcutta three years ago—Mr. Chapman has a branch there, you know—and Luke told me that he was doing nothing, and living at a queer sort of hotel, where ships' officers and those sort of people stay, not at all the thing. Then, you see, he's done no good. He's just as poor as when he went out ten years ago." "So he's done no harm and no good. Then you can keep an open mind about him, May. Meanwhile, if I were you, I should try and find him a wife with money. He's sure to be interesting, you know. Men who travel usually are. Let me know when he comes back, as I should like to meet him again. Well, good-bye, dear, and don't worry too much about your black sheep. The colour may come off, or you may be able to get him whitewashed." "Edith Grimmer was very flippant about it," Mrs. Marlow complained to her husband that evening, after she had shown him Jimmy's letter and had heard his remarks thereon. "I didn't like her tone at all. She has grown rather coarse lately, since they have got into that new set. They dine in town a good deal now, and I'm sure they can't afford it. She's taken to smoking cigarettes, too." Her husband, a small man with a waxed moustache and the most perfect fitting clothes, frowned heavily. There had been girls, in fact there were still some, who might blow whole clouds of cigarette smoke in his face and only evoke a laugh from him; but they had nothing to do with his home life. Where the latter was concerned, he was very careful; and he fully agreed with May's prejudices. Such things injured one's position in the neighbourhood. "Edith is a very foolish woman," he said severely. "And Grimmer is little more sensible. He was talking a great deal of nonsense about South African mines when we were coming down in the train this evening. Crossley and Merchant were in the carriage, and I am sure they were pleased when I took him up sharply. I do not know whether he is aware that I was interested in the promotion of the Umchabeze Gold Dredging Syndicate; if so, his remarks were positively insulting. It seems he lost money over it. So did other people; but I can't help that." He threw his cigar end into the fire with a rather vicious gesture. His wife came across to his chair, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him gently on the forehead. "Never mind, dear. You mustn't let these silly people annoy you. I'm sorry now I worried you to-night about my brother, Jimmy. I might have left it until the morning, when you weren't tired." He drew her face down to his and returned her kiss. She was perfectly content for him to be away all day, even for several days when he went golfing, and he was content to go; yet, in a sense, they were lovers still, after the fashion of those whose way through life has been easy. "You were quite right to mention it, dear," he said. "Of course we must do what we can for him, have him to stay here when he lands, and so on. I daresay he will be quite presentable, after all. Why, a man I know at the club, Heydon, [Pg 5] [Pg 6] [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] Amos Heydon, was in the East for twelve years, in a bank I think, and you would never imagine he had been out of the City. He's got all our ways." Mrs. Marlow sighed. "I hope you're right, Henry. You usually are, and you've had so much experience. But I wish we knew what he intended to do for a living. He is thirty now, or nearly that, and ought to be in a better position. The whole thing is most annoying. I must take care he does not tell the children stories which will make them dream at nights —Harold is sure to ask him for some, and you know what a memory the boy has. Then, too, we don't want Jimmy proposing to any of the nice girls we know, like Laura Stephens or May Cutler; for then we should have to confess that he had no means of any sort, and it would be horribly humiliating. See how well those young Cutlers have got on in their father's office. Of course, Edith Grimmer knows that Jimmy is a failure; but she won't talk about it." Yet, at that very moment, Mrs. Grimmer was retailing the story of May's troubles to her husband and a couple of guests who had been dining with them. "Jimmy always was a nice boy, not a bit of a prig. But he's not what you can call a success; and I fancy the Marlows won't want to exhibit him. Still, I shall have him to dinner and get some nice girls to meet him." Grimmer laughed. He had not forgotten what had passed between Marlow and himself in the train, and he was far from forgiving his loss over the gold dredging syndicate. "Have him by all means, Edith, if you think it will annoy those people. Besides, a Grierson who was interesting would be quite a show animal." CHAPTER II Jimmy Grierson landed in England a broken man. What was almost worse, he was aware of the fact, and, whilst he resented the way in which Fate had dealt with him, he had no great hopes of altering things. He had drifted so long that, somehow, he supposed he must go on drifting. John Locke had stopped the process for a time, and given him something to stick to, something worth doing; but a bullet from an old Remington in the hands of a ragged Dago, a bullet probably aimed at someone else, had sent him adrift again. True, that same Dago had gone, a few seconds later, to whatever place there is reserved for his kind; but that did not alter matters; it avenged, perhaps, but it could not bring back, the one man besides his father for whom Jimmy had ever cared, who had ever understood him, and, therefore, been able to keep him from drifting. His decision to return to England had been taken on the spur of the moment, without reflection; but he held to it, because no other course seemed to offer any better prospects. He knew, perfectly well, that Locke's partner would not want to keep him on, and he shrank from the ordeal of searching for employment again. He had been through it so often before; and he had learnt, long since, that the man on the spot only gets the temporary billets; the permanent staff is always recruited at home. Moreover, he had the fevers of half a dozen different countries in his system, and the shock of Locke's death brought at least one of them to the surface. Two Dagos helped him on board ship, a wreck, and though, physically, he was much stronger at the end of the voyage, his nerves were far from being right. London extended its welcome to him in the form of a drenching rain, and he shivered a little under the thin, ready-made overcoat he had bought from a German store on the Coast. He had hoped that one of the family would have met the boat train, and carried him off to a real home; but, though there had been a welcoming hand for most of his fellow passengers, he, himself, scanned the crowd in vain for a familiar face. Even those who had come across the ocean with him seemed to forget him the moment they got out on to the platform. He became the stranger at once; so he stood to one side until they had all departed, feeling horribly alone. Still, he was home at last, in his own country, and he tried to work up a proper sense of elation as he waited in the station entrance, watching a porter hoisting his battered trunks on to a cab. It was already evening, and the stream of people was flowing inwards through the gates of the terminus, London's workers returning to those dreary rows of villas in the suburbs, which, probably, seemed delightfully peaceful, almost rural, by comparison with the noise and grime of the City. Some were closing dripping umbrellas; others, having no umbrellas, shook the rain out of the brims of theirs hats, and turned down their soaking coat-collars as they came under shelter. All looked more or less draggled and weary; yet you could see that they were on their way to their own houses, where there would be someone to welcome them, someone who had been waiting for them. Suddenly all Jimmy's sense of loneliness came back, and he shivered again as the cab splashed out of the muddy station yard, towards the hotel to which he had told his people to address their letters. There was a letter from each of his sisters awaiting him, and he tore them open more eagerly than was his wont. Ida, writing from her home in Northampton, invited him to come down for a week at some vague future date; one of the children was unwell, and until it recovered it was impossible to fix a day. Still, they would be delighted to see him again. Her letters always had a note of stiffness in them, which was purely unintentional, or rather, purely natural, reflecting the one salient point in her character. May's letter began with an apology. They were so sorry they could not ask him down that night; but they had a large [Pg 9] [Pg 10] [Pg 11] [Pg 12] [Pg 13] [Pg 14] dinner party on, and he would have made an odd man. Doubtless, too, he would be tired after his journey and disinclined for such a function. The following day, however, they would be glad to have him. It was forty minutes' run from Victoria Station, and she would send the car to meet him at the other end. Jimmy thrust the letters into his pocket, and followed his luggage up to his room, which was a perfect example of its kind, containing the irreducible minimum of furniture an hotel guest could require, and having, as its sole wall decoration, a notice imploring you to switch out the electric light when you did not actually require it. He was disappointed, though not annoyed. The excuses appeared genuine, if rather inadequate and he never suspected that May had spent the afternoon in a distressing state of anxiety lest he should change his mind, and, instead of going to the hotel, come straight down in time for dinner. "There is no telling what he may be like," she said to her sister-in-law, who was staying in the house. "We must see him first before we introduce him to people here. Why, he may not even possess a dress suit." Jimmy dined in the hotel. The dining-room was very empty, and he had a corner of it all to himself, a miserable contrast to the cheerful, crowded saloon of the mail steamer he had quitted that morning. He ate very little, and would not wait for coffee. He felt he must get outside that gloomy barn of the hostelry, must go where there was life and movement, and, and if he could find it, society. The rain had ceased, and, as he came out of the dull side street into the Strand, he experienced for the first time that strange thrill, excitement, anticipation, almost exhilaration, which only the returned wanderer who comes back to the Greatest of Cities after years of absence, can know. When he had driven up to the hotel, the day population had been hurrying home through the downpour; now, though the street and the pavements were still glistening with the wet, and there was another deluge to come, London, the night side of London, was out as if there was no such things as rain and mud and sodden footwear. Jimmy stood a couple of minutes, watching it, taking it all in, as though he had never seen it before. A policeman on point duty eyed him curiously, yet with no hint of suspicion. Most men, and practically every woman, remembered Jimmy's face when they met him a second time. He was not handsome, far from it; but, in some indefinable way, his grey eyes suggested sympathy, whilst the poise of his head spoke of determination verging on obstinacy. He was looking at the scene as a whole, rather than at individuals, and the policeman remarked, with a kind of grim satisfaction, that he let the women pass him unnoticed. Even when one turned back at the next corner and repassed him slowly, he seemed not to see her. Just as he was turning away, however, a girl's face did catch his eye, and, unconsciously, he stopped again. She was coming out of a restaurant a few yards away, accompanied by a man in evening dress, though she herself was in an ordinary walking costume. Tall and very graceful, with dark eyes and a perfect profile, she formed a curious contrast to her short and rather stout companion. It was only a question of a minute before they got into a waiting hansom and driven away; but, somehow, the incident worried Jimmy. He wondered who she was, what she was, and was so preoccupied with her that as he walked on eastwards, he hardly noticed that he left the Strand, with its life and hurry, for the comparative quietude of Fleet Street by night. He had come out of the hotel intending to have a drink at the first likely-looking bar he came to; but he was half-way between the Griffin and Ludgate Circus before he remembered he was thirsty. "Hullo, Grierson, my best of piracy experts. So you've come to Fleet Street at last, as I always said you would. Sneddon, let me introduce Mr. Grierson, an old colleague of mine on a short-lived paper in Shanghai. He knows more Chinese pirates than any man I ever met, not to mention gunrunners and opium smugglers; and he's perfectly invaluable to fill a column when the news has run short." The speaker, a man of about Jimmy's own age, with a keen, smooth- shaven face and restless eyes, shook hands heartily, and ordered another round of drinks. At the sound of his voice, Jimmy's face lit up with genuine pleasure. He had known Douglas Kelly well on the China Coast, when the other was editing a local paper for a starvation wage, and, as Kelly said, he had written him many a column to fill up space with when both copy and advertisements were short. The British and American community, being absorbed in trade, and knowing nothing of literature, and often very little of the English language, as is the way of its kind, had failed to see the genius under the wild and not too temperate exterior, and had frowned on the young editor as a rather scandalous person entirely devoid of commercial instincts; but Jimmy had always stood by him, and when a sudden access of wealth, in the form of a draft for sixty pounds for a series of short stories in an American magazine, had enabled Kelly to say good-bye both to the China Coast and to his creditors, Grierson has regretted him as much, or even more, than had the latter. "So you've come to Fleet Street, at last," Kelly repeated. "I knew you would. And I suppose you are going to enter into competition with me. I believe you are the one man of whom I am really afraid." Jimmy laughed. "I only landed to-day, and I wandered down here by chance. As for writing, I have done very little since I saw you off on that tramp steamer. There were two or three acquaintances of yours watching the mail boat next day on the chance of finding you." "Herbst, I suppose, and the other squarehead from the hotel—what was his name?—oh, Heine, and that uncleanly Greek tailor. They were a dull lot, and I've forgotten them long ago. Tell me about yourself. Where have you been?" "India, Australia, and the Dago Republics, where I saw the beginning and the end of various presidents. I made a [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] [Pg 18] [Pg 19] couple of trips on a blockade runner, and went on a hidden treasure hunt. It sounds all right, thrilling and exciting, yet, when I size it up in my own mind, it comes down to a record of fever and disappointment; with a few purple patches which were so good that, somehow, they seem to have come out of another man's book, instead of being my own experiences." Kelly stared into his glass. "I know," he said very quietly. "I know the game, though I got out of it sooner than you did, being wiser, as I always told you I was. I suppose you know I'm famous?" Jimmy smiled; long ago, Douglas Kelly had explained to him his theory of self-advertisement, how, once he was strong enough to do so, he intended to go in for a regular system of blatant, unblushing egotism, which would pay equally little regard to the feelings of others and to the recognised canons of veracity. Now, it was evident that he was translating his theory into practice. "Even in the Dago countries we used to get papers containing articles of yours," Jimmy said. "And I saw a review of one of your books. Did you put some of our old friends of the China Coast into them?" Douglas Kelly shook his head emphatically. "They weren't even worth satirising. They might take it as flattery if I remembered their very existence.... I've done what I said I would, Grierson. I'm making a thousand a year now." He turned to his companion. "Sneddon, you might go back to the office, and see if there's anything doing. If anyone wants me, say I'm busy"; then when the other had gone, "How are things with you, Jimmy?" he asked bluntly. Jimmy laughed a little awkwardly. "Well, they shot my last employer, who was also my best friend, out there; and I came home because I thought it might change the luck." "So you're broke, just as I used to be?" "No, not exactly. I've got a few pounds left; but I've nothing to do, and I don't know what to turn my hand to—that's all." Jimmy answered, then as Kelly dived into his pocket and produced a cheque book, he flushed quickly, "No, old man. If I want that, I'll come to you; but I don't want it yet. Thanks very much, though." Kelly shrugged his shoulders. "You're quite a change. It's generally the other way round. Men ask me for money, and I do the refusing." Usually, his expression was hard, almost cynical, but as he looked at Jimmy it softened, and he seemed to grow years younger. He was back again on the China Coast, in the days when success was a thing of the future, and therefore greatly to be prized. "You'll do well, Grierson, you've got it in you, just as I had. And, after all, London is the one place, the only market worth bringing your stuff to." "I will admit I had thought of writing, but I know how hard it is to get a start, and——" Jimmy began; but Kelly cut him short. "Rot! It's hard for the ruck, for the ninety and nine, who, after all, ought to find it impossible, not merely hard. But it's different for you and me, Jimmy Grierson, because we're not in the ruck. Of course you'll write, for it's in you, and you would be a fool to try anything else. You won't jump into a job right away; and you'll have to fight as I fought. I started as a sub-editor on three pounds a week, correcting the grammar in the copy of men who were getting five times that amount—but I can get you a start of sorts, right away. Come around now to the Record office, and I'll introduce you to Dodgson, the editor, a perfectly uninspired person, who ought to have been a grocer's assistant and have sung in a chapel choir. But he has the grace to realise his limitations, and take my advice. It will mean two guineas every now and then for a Page Four article—a thousand words, you know." Jimmy finished off his drink and stood up. He was beginning to understand that, after all, there was an element of sane, cool common sense behind Kelly's blatant self-assertiveness. It might irritate what the other called the "ruck," but it also cowed them, and they got out of his path; moreover, there was always the undeniable fact that the man had genius of no common order. Jimmy had been perfectly sincere when he said he had not come home intending to make his living by his pen. He had thought of doing so, certainly, or rather had longed to do so; but, like most amateurs, he had been deterred by what he had heard of the difficulties, and had put the idea on one side. Now, however, the proposition had come to him in a concrete form, from a man who had succeeded, a man, moreover, who knew his capacity, and was able to judge his prospects of success. After all, it was only part of that game of drift which he had been playing for the last ten years; and the new phase had this advantage—he might be able to make use of what he had learned during the previous stages of his drifting. So he followed Douglas Kelly out into Fleet Street, then down one of the narrow alleys, to the Herald office. The main entrance to the Record building, that through which the general public enters, when it wishes to pay for advertisements, or consult the files, or order back numbers, has a rather gorgeous swing door and a quite gorgeous door-keeper in uniform with no less than four medal ribbons on his breast; but all this is closed in by an iron grille when normal people leave the City, and the staff has to enter through a small door at the back, which is guarded by an old and surly porter, over the window of whose box hangs a peremptory and uncleanly notice forbidding anyone to smoke in the building. Douglas Kelly ignored both the porter and the notice, and went straight up to the second floor, where, after a moment's parley with a weary-looking secretary, he and Jimmy were admitted to the editor's room. Somehow, Jimmy had always pictured the editor of a great daily as a plethoric person with keen eyes, and a [Pg 20] [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] background of leather-bound volumes; but this one was thin and insignificant; there was not a single book in his room, and, at the first glance, Jimmy was inclined to believe that his friend had been right when he spoke of the editor singing in a chapel choir. Yet, after Kelly had introduced him briefly, as an old colleague, and Dodgson had put a few curt questions, Grierson began to change his mind. Jimmy could talk well. He had, in an unusual degree, the art of putting things vividly and crisply, and he possessed an extraordinary memory for those little details which give actuality to the picture. When he described the shooting of a presidential candidate, Dodgson could see the man with his grimy hands and torn collar, crumpling up as the volley from the firing party caught him. The editor himself had never come in contact with crude realities such as this—a London County Councillor escaping by a hair's breadth from a fully-deserved conviction for corruption over a tramway contract was the nearest approach he had witnessed—but he understood the value of Jimmy's reminiscences, and, without a moment's hesitation, he asked him for an article, hinting plainly that, if the written matter were as good as his spoken words, the paper would be glad of many others. Jimmy left the room with an unwonted sense of elation. Kelly had withdrawn immediately he had introduced his friend, but he was waiting in the doorway. "Well, what did you do?" he asked. "He's going to give me a chance," Jimmy answered. Kelly nodded. "Of course he will. He must. I introduced you. Don't you realise, James Grierson, that I am a man they dare not offend, because the great fool-public wants stuff with my signature; and, if the Record upset me, I could go across the road to the Herald and, perhaps, get a bigger salary? It's all a game of bluff, as I told you years ago in that fan-tan shop in Shanghai. I know you won't bluff through as I have done, because you have a streak of—what shall I call it?—early Victorian modesty, in you; but still you will come out on top, because you've got brains, instead of the whisky-soaked sponge which occupies the space behind the brow of the average Fleet Street man." "I shouldn't think you're very popular in Fleet Street," Jimmy remarked grimly. Douglas Kelly shrugged his shoulders. "The ruck would dislike me anyway, because I know more than it does. Still, it need not worry. I am going to quit journalism, and go in for fiction soon, as you will do in due course.... What's the time?" They had come out into Fleet Street again, and he glanced upwards at the Telegraph's clock. "Half-past ten. It's too late to take you down to stay at my place, as I can't telephone to my wife. So I may as well stay in town. We'll wander round a bit, and after closing time, I'll take you up to one of my clubs." "Your wife. So you're married?" Jimmy smiled, as though at some recollection. "You seem to have done pretty well all round; whilst I am still where I was." The other took him up sharply, "Still where you were. Why, you've got your head full of copy, and you're right at your market, instead of being on that forsaken China Coast. Well, let's have a drink here for a start." CHAPTER III Jimmy awoke in the morning with a slight headache, and a fixed determination not to go out again with Douglas Kelly. True, it had cost him nothing, Kelly having carried him from one club to another, cashing a cheque at each, and spending the proceeds with such freedom as to evoke a protest from his guest. "I want to impress you," Kelly had retorted. "I want to show you how well I've done. I always do the same when I get hold of any of you fellows from out there. Yet," he paused and looked at the other keenly, "you're such a queer beggar, that I don't suppose you are impressed. I needn't have tried it on you, after all," but, none the less, he had declined to let his companion go, and it had been past three when a sleepy night porter admitted Jimmy to the hotel, Kelly having declared his intention of taking a room at the club they had visited last. Jimmy drew up his blind to find the sun shining in a cloudless sky, and his spirits went up at once. As a result of the deluge of the night before, London looked almost clean and bright, and he began to wonder at his depression of the previous evening. After all, it was very good to be home again, and, thanks to Kelly, he had already made a small start, which might lead to much bigger things. Kelly, himself, had arrived in England with nothing, an unknown man. From Kelly, his mind worked backwards to the girl he had seen enter the cab. It was curious how her face seemed fixed in his memory. The thought of her, and of her possible story, worried him all the time he was shaving, and he found himself wishing he had never noticed her. Somehow, he did not like the look of her companion, who seemed to treat her with a very perfunctory sort of courtesy, verging on familiarity, or even contempt. He was still thinking of her when he went down to breakfast; but the sight of a copy of the Record, the first real English daily he had seen for many years, a paper, moreover, which wanted him to write for it, changed the current of his thoughts, and he forgot all about the girl. Dodgson had told him there was no hurry for the article, any time within the next week or so would do, and he, himself, knew that it would be impossible to write in the dreary atmosphere of the hotel; so he decided to go down to the City and call on his brother, Walter. There was no one else he wanted to see in town. All his former acquaintances had dropped clean out of his life, or, rather, he had dropped out of theirs; and, probably, he could not have found one of [Pg 24] [Pg 25] [Pg 26] [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] them, even had he wished to do so, which was not the case. He was a very lonely man, he told himself; and yet he did not feel bitter about that fact as he had done on the previous night; his meeting with Kelly, and the new hope with which the other had infused him, had changed his views greatly. Now, it seemed as if he had a prospect of doing something definite, of starting on a new career, his success in which would depend entirely on his own exertions. Walter Grierson was a short, clean-shaven man with a decidedly pompous manner. He had been very successful in his profession, owing to his energy, rather than to his mental capacity, and he regarded unsuccessful men as little better than criminals. His whole outlook on life was severe, except in his own home, where he was a generous husband and indulgent father. Never having been tempted himself, he had no sympathy with those who fell, being quite unable to understand them. Steadiness was the virtue he most admired in younger men, meaning by that term the capacity for choosing and sticking to an orthodox method of livelihood and for maintaining an unwavering respectability of conduct. Jimmy's career, the wanderings from one country to another, the continual changes of occupation, had been a very real grief to him, violating as it did every canon of his creed. No one could call his brother steady. Walter Grierson was engaged when Jimmy called, and the visitor spent half an hour glancing round the gloomy office, and wondering how anyone could be content to spend his days in such a place. He wanted to smoke, but something in the attitude of the clerks restrained him, and he put his cigarette case back into his pocket. He was not sure about the three younger ones, whether they would be scandalised, or whether the smell of the tobacco would arouse cruel longings which could not be satisfied until the too-brief luncheon hour came round; but there was no mistaking the reprobation in the old managing clerk's face. Even their richest clients knew better than to disturb the microbes on the upper shelves with their smoke. Those same clients were all City men, dignified, and understanding the ways of the City, which are very different from those of San Francisco or Johannesburg. In London, it is only foreigners and green-fruit brokers and such like doubtful people, with neither self-respect nor position to maintain, who break the City's law. Stockbrokers are, of course, men apart from the rest. They draw most of their customers from a class which knows nothing of business; and must therefore be humoured; moreover, a little eccentricity, a lightheartedness, verging at times on the clownish, is useful, for, if duly reported, it procures the Stock Exchange a free advertisement in the Press. Even Mr. Marlow had been known to play football with a silk hat and wave a little Union Jack, when the news of a British victory, which meant an improvement in the Market, was recorded in a special edition. But his brother-in-law, Walter Grierson, had never done any of these things, having neither the need, nor the desire, for advertisement. Jimmy did not know the City, but he knew a good deal of mankind, and he gleaned something of the spirit and traditions of that office, as his eyes wandered from the rows of black, shiny deed boxes to the equally shiny pate of the managing clerk, and then to the drab-looking girl typist, pale-faced and narrow-chested, who seemed to finger the key-board as though the maddening click of her abominable machine had killed any individuality she might once have had, and turned her into a mere part of the mechanism of the City. The one spot of colour in the office was an insurance company's calendar, and, even on that, the design was crude and the inscription little more than a dull list of figures. Jimmy sighed, pitying them all. He did not know that those who have never experienced the crude things of life seldom have any desire for them. Being prosaic, they are satisfied with prosaic surroundings, which is a fortunate thing in an essentially prosaic age. There is very little room for romance in a world which gauges success by the measure of a reputed bank balance. At last, the client, who proved to have side whiskers and an ivory-handled umbrella, took his departure, and Walter Grierson came out in his wake. The solicitor greeted Jimmy, if not warmly, at least sincerely; then sat down and slowly took stock of the returned wanderer. "You look better than I expected from what May told me you had said in your last letter. Yes, you look decidedly better. Still, you have changed a great deal, changed in many ways." He adjusted his gold-rimmed pince-nez, in order to make a closer scrutiny. Jimmy laughed. "Well, you must remember, it's ten years since you saw me last, and I wasn't very old then. You, yourself, look exactly the same. I should have known you anywhere. How are Janet and the children?" Walter Grierson's face brightened perceptibly. He was a family man above everything, and he gave his brother very full details. "Let me see, you've never seen George and Christine, have you?" he asked at the end of the recital. Jimmy shook his head. "No, I have seven or eight unknown nephews and nieces to inspect, or I'm not sure that it isn't nine. I've rather lost count." The elder man frowned slightly; it was not quite the thing to refer to members of the family in that flippant way. Surely Jimmy could recollect the number of his sister's children. He gave the tally of the latter, with their names and ages, and with guarded comments on their peculiarities, from which Jimmy gathered that they were decidedly inferior to the little Walter Griersons. And after that there came a pause, short in duration, certainly, but very significant. After ten years' separation the brothers had exhausted their subjects of mutual interest in little over ten minutes. Jimmy fingered the cigarette case in his pocket, knowing the consolation and the wisdom to be found in tobacco; but he did not like to produce it, and he had already noted that Walter's room was innocent of any ash-tray; so, instead, he racked his brains for a new topic of conversation. At last: "You're the sole partner here now, aren't you?" he asked. Walter nodded. "Yes, Jardine died three years back, and I don't want anyone else till I can take in Ralph, my eldest [Pg 30] [Pg 31] [Pg 32] [Pg 33] [Pg 34] boy. He has a nasty cold, or you would have seen him in the office." He shook his head, as though at the thought of the dangerous after-effects of colds, and it struck Jimmy that, for a man of forty-three or forty-four, Walter was very old and stuffy. He, himself, often felt old and more than a little weary, but in quite another way. He was not snuffly and solemn in consequence; it was only that he knew his youth was slipping from him fast, perhaps had already slipped from him, as is the case with every European who stays too long in countries made for the coloured man, and it irritated him to think that, if success ever did come to him, it would probably be when he had lost the capacity for enjoyment. "Have you made any plans for your future movements?" Walter asked suddenly. Jimmy started. "Well, yes—at least, last night I met an old friend of mine, and he advised me to go in for writing. I've done a bit of it, of course, and this man, Douglas Kelly—I expect you know his name." Walter shook his head; he never read anything except the Times. "He's a man who's made a big hit, and he knows what I can do. So I think of taking his advice. The Record has already asked me for an article." Once more, Walter Grierson frowned, and then he sighed. The only journalists he had ever met had been connected with financial papers, and his negotiations with them had taught him the subtleties of scientific blackmail. Being a man of little imagination, though of retentive memory, he judged the whole profession by the two or three members of it, or rather pseudo-members, he had been unfortunate enough to encounter professionally. "I am sorry to hear your decision, Jimmy," he said. "Very sorry, indeed. You will find it a most precarious way of life, and it will bring you into contact with highly undesirable people. I had hoped, we had all hoped, that now you had returned you would settle down to something steady. Personally, I think you will be making a great mistake. But I suppose you know your own business best." He shook his head, as though, in his own mind, he was quite sure Jimmy did not know anything of the sort. Then, once more, there was an awkward pause, and it was a relief to both of the brothers when the junior clerk came in with a card in his hand. Walter Grierson glanced at the name, then got up. "I am sorry, Jimmy; but this is a man with whom I had made an appointment. I would ask you to lunch with me, but there is more than a probability of my having to take him out. You must come down and stay with us soon. Janet told me to give you her love, and ask you to fix a date. I am very glad you called. Give my love to May when you see her to-night. And, Jimmy," he hesitated a little, "of course it is not for me to advise you; but I do wish you would reconsider that decision of yours. It's a most precarious calling, most precarious, and, I am afraid, one full of temptations." There was perfectly genuine concern in his voice, and yet, within a couple of minutes, Jimmy and his affairs were clean out of his mind, and he was deep in the business of his client. Jimmy lighted a cigarette on the landing outside his brother's office; but neither the tobacco, nor the drink he had a few minutes later, could alleviate his sense of disappointment. He was a very lonely man. CHAPTER IV The Marlow motor-car, large and luxurious, with red panels and an expensive alien chauffeur, met Jimmy at the station. Mrs. Marlow hurried down to the hall as she heard the throbbing of the engine outside the front door, and greeted her brother with emotion which verged on tears. "I am very glad to see you again, Jimmy, dear," she said, ki...