THE MASTERFOLK

New 6s. Novels

PIGS IN CLOVER

By Frank Danby

THE CALL OF THE WILD

By Jack London

SPENDTHRIFT SUMMER

By Margrey Williams

IN THE GUARDIANSHIP OF GOD

By Flora Annie Steel

BEGGAR’S MANOR

By R. Murray Gilchrist

GORDON KEITH

By Thomas Nelson Page

THE LUCK OF BARERAKES

By Caroline Marriage

SIR JULIAN THE APOSTATE

By Mrs. Clement Parsons

TYPHOON

By Joseph Conrad

JERUSALEM

By Selma Lagerlöf

’TWIXT GOD AND MAMMON

By William Edwards Tirebuck

LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
20 & 21 Bedford Street, W.C.

THE MASTERFOLK

Wherein is attempted the unravelling
of the Strange Affair of my Lord
Wyntwarde of Cavil and Miss
Betty Modeyne

by
HALDANE MACFALL
Author of ‘The Wooings of Jezebel Pettyfer,’ etc.

London
William Heinemann
1903

All rights reserved

TO
GEORGE MEREDITH
ESQUIRE

TO GIVE YOU THE SALUTE OF SOVEREIGNTY,
SIR, CAN ADD NO TITTLE TO YOUR STATURE;
BUT THERE IS SOLDIER’S DELIGHT IN SALUTING
A CONQUEROR—AND TO YOUR BAYS
THERE IS NO PRETENCE OF A PRETENDER

CONTENTS

OF THE BUDDING OF
THE TREE OF LIFE

CHAPTER I

Which shows Some of the Gods in their Machinery, with but a Shadowy Hint of the Printer’s Devil

Amidst the untidy litter of torn paper that strewed the bare plank floor there stood a large double writing-table, spread with proofs and manuscript and pamphlets; and, with his feet in the litter of the floor and his elbows in the litter of the table, sat a gaunt yellow-haired youth, solemnly writing.

Netherby Gomme peered at his work in the waning light of the departing November afternoon; and the deepening dusk that took possession of the shabby room, turning all things to the colour of shadows, strained his attention, drawing long lines about his mouth and pronouncing the pallor of his serious face—the grim mask of the humorist. The slips of paper that were set into the sleeve-ends of his well-brushed threadbare coat to save the soiling of his shirt-cuffs, and the long reach of yellow sock that showed his feet thrust a wrinkled span beyond the original intention of his much-knee’d trousers, marked the ordered untidiness of the literary habit.

Everything in the room—the overflowed waste-paper basket at his feet; the severe academic comfort of the polished wooden armchair that stood yawning augustly vacant opposite to him; the shut door at his right hand, with its curt announcement of “Editor” in stiff, forbidding letters; the low bookshelves about the room with their rows of books of reference, stacks of journals and literary scraps piled a-top of them; the walls with their irregular array of calendars, advertisements, notices, and printed and pictured odds and ends; the atmosphere of the scrap-gathering paste-pot and of clippings from the knowledge of the world; the sepulchral, monotonous clock that ticked its aggressive statement of the passage of time as though with a cough of admonition that, whatever journalism might be, life was short and art was long; the naked mantel beneath it, which held the shabby soul of the jerrybuilder turned to stone—for it is the hearth that is haunted by the spirit of the architect, and this one had been a vulgar fellow—the bare fireplace that did not even go through the feeble pretence of giving comfort, for it had no fender, no hearthrug, but gaped, bored and empty and black, upon the making of literature—everything marked the room to be one of those scanty workshops where opinions are made, the dingy editorial office of a struggling weekly review; and the extent of the dinginess showed it to be a very struggling affair indeed.

The young man blotted his writing, and flipped through some pages of manuscript:

“Oliver,” said he, without looking up, “a light, I think!... We have here lying before us a most caustic literary criticism; but the light is so far gone that we can scarce see the dogmatic gentleman’s own literary infelicities—nay, can scarce see even his most split infinitives.”

He spoke like a leading article, with a slight cockney accent.

In the gloom of a dark corner by the window, at a high desk that stood against the wall, where he sat perched on a tall office stool with his feet curled round its long legs, a small boy ceased reading, and, fumbling about in the breast-pocket of his short Eton jacket, lugged out a tin box, struck a match, and, leaning forward, set a flame to the gas-jet. The place leaped into light. The youngster flung the matchbox across the room, and went on with his reading. It fell at the feet of the yellow-haired youth.

“Ah, Noll,” said he, stooping over and searching for it amongst the torn fragments of paper, “like those of even greater genius, our aims are only too often lost in the sea of wasted endeavour.”

He found the box; lit the gas at his right hand; coughed:

“Are you putting that down?” he asked drily of the grim unanswering silence.

The boy took no notice. The yellow-haired youth chuckled, and the deep-furrowed lines about his mouth broadened into a quizzical smile.

The boy Oliver could scarcely have been fourteen years of age, and had he not been son of the editor, and that editor the thriftless owner of but a very broken-winged Muse, and of a steadily diminishing literary property, the boy must still have been at school. He sighed heavily, rousing from his reading:

“I say, Netherby,” said he, “here’s a poem by that fellow with the hair.”

He held out the manuscript.

Netherby Gomme looked up:

“A lyric?” he asked.

“No. Drivel.”

Netherby Gomme sighed, and sat back in his chair:

“With what candid brutality the sub-editorial mind treats the most ecstatic flights of the imagination!” said he.

The boy Oliver shifted impatiently on his high stool:

“Shall I reject the ponderous rot?” he asked.

Netherby Gomme coughed:

“We—if you please, Oliver—we. It is always better to adopt the editorial we in matters of weight; and it throws the responsibility upon the irresponsible gods of journalism.”

Noll sighed, stretched himself, and yawned.

“All right. We’ll reject it, eh?... No good troubling the governor”—he jerked his thumb towards the editor’s room—“he’s so beastly short this afternoon. But I had better write the rejection, I suppose—the father doesn’t like poets to be rejected on the printed form—they’re so sensitive.”

He settled himself to write a letter, tongue in cheek, head down, and quoting for the other’s approval as he wrote:

“The—editor—regrets—that—whilst—he—appreciates—the—beauty of—the—lines—herewith—returned—he—is—unable—to—make—use of—them—owing—to——”

He came to a halt and invited the prompt. None coming, he glanced over his shoulder:

“What is it owing to, Netherby? I’m such a beastly poor liar. You’ve been on the press so much longer. Hustle your vivid imagination and chuck us an excuse.”

Netherby Gomme shook his head:

“I am only a humorist, Oliver—humour must walk knee-deep in truth. I do not travel on Romance——”

“Oh, shut up!... No good chucking the idiot roughly.... It’s beastly long.... We’ll chuck it for length, eh?”

Netherby Gomme smiled at him:

“Noll,” said he, “you are possessed of the magnificent carelessness of the gods—and I never interfere with religious bodies.”

Noll turned to his writing again, and there was a steady scratching of pen on paper.

Netherby Gomme sat for awhile, his face seamed with comic lines of grim amusement:

“I suppose,” he said at last—“I suppose we have read the poem, Oliver?”

“No, I haven’t. But you can.”

Netherby Gomme moved uneasily in his seat:

“N-no. No thanks, Oliver. We’ll take it as read.”

He coughed:

“By the way, Oliver, have you got the dummy for next week’s issue over there?”

Noll licked, sealed, and thumped the letter on the desk:

“Oh, ah, yes—I’m sitting on it and a bunch of keys to remind me.” He took a bunch of keys from under him, and put them in his trousers pocket, then lugged out from beneath him the dummy form of the review in its brown-paper cover. He opened it, and wetting his finger on his lip, he flipped through the leaves with their proofs pasted in position for guidance to the printer.

“Look here, Netherby.” He held up the booklet, pointing to a blank space. “The governor said I was to tell you we had better complete this column with a poem—says verse gives a pleasant appearance to the page.” He dropped the dummy on the desk in front of him. “It’s an awful bore, Netherby,” said he, “but that bundle of poems he gave me the other day took up such a lot of space on my desk that I flung them into the waste-paper basket. Can’t you knock up about twenty lines of amorous matter? I promise not to whistle.”

Netherby Gomme smiled grimly, sighed, took up a pen, and, drawing a sheet of paper to him, prepared to write....

The yellow-haired youth had been with this literary venture from the start. He had begun as office-boy; and as each member of the original staff had fallen out, at the stern prunings of necessity, he had been promoted to their places, until he sat alone, as leader-writer, humorist, topical poet, sentimentalist, sub-editor, office lad, and general usefulness. Scrupulous to the smallest detail, reliable in the performance of the minutest fraction of his bond, he got through his work with the facility of a man of affairs; and, like all busy men, finding time for everything, he had spent his hours of leisure outside the office in the humane atmosphere of the theatre, in the tragic fellowship of the street, in the eternal fresh comedy of the city’s by-ways, and in the company of the mighty masters of his tongue; in this, the best school of education in all the round world, he had acquired such a knowledge of letters, such a taste for the niceties of the written word, and such a mastery in its use, as would have astounded, as indeed it was destined to astound, even them that thought they knew him to his fullest powers.

The other, the editor’s son, Oliver Baddlesmere, had come to the office to complete establishment straight out of the schoolroom some months back. He had been brought in to reduce the pressure of clerking work, and, owing to extreme youth and inexperience, had been given the simpler duties to perform, so that he came naturally and as a matter of course to preside over the destinies of the poet’s corner and to impart information to a hungry world from the battered volumes of an encyclopædia, and suchlike heavy books of reference, the weight of which, in the intervals of airily relieving the world’s thirst for knowledge, the boy used for the purpose of pressing prints—of which he was gathering a collection from the illustrated papers of the day, pasting them into brown paper scrap-books of his own making.

Netherby Gomme had scarcely got under fair way with the writing of his amorous matter when the boy whipped round on his office-stool.

“I say, Netherby,” said he; “your book is making a splash all along the Thames. The bookstalls are covered with it—the whole blessed town is saffron with it.”

The yellow-haired youth smiled complacently; sitting back in his chair, he nodded:

“Indeed?” he said.

Noll slipped down off the stool, took it up, and carried it over to the fireplace:

“You were a chunk-head not to put your name to it!” he said. “But all the same, you know, it’s been roaring funny to hear the father and mother talk about it.”

He vaulted to the top of the high stool, scrambled on to his feet, and, reaching up, opened the glass face of the clock:

“It almost bursts me sometimes that I can’t tell ’em you wrote it,” he said. He got on tip-toe and put forward the large hand twenty minutes, shut the face with a click, turned where he stood, and, thrusting his hands into his trouser-pockets, he added confidentially:

“D’you know, Netherby, between you and me and the office ink-pot, I never thought myself that you could be so uncommon funny.”

The yellow-haired youth blushed.

Clambering down off the stool, Noll carried it back to his desk, took down a tall silk hat, ran his coat-sleeve round it, and put it on his head.

Netherby Gomme coughed:

“Oliver,” said he—hesitated—made a pause—then added nervously: “Oliver, I am going to confide in you. In fact, if I don’t I shall get some sort of low malarial fever. Now, don’t treat the confidence with the giggle of childishness.”

Noll sighed. He turned, leaped on to his office-stool, swung round, set his feet on the bar, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms, and, peering at the other out of the shadow from under the brim of his hat, said gloomily:

“O lor! the little typewriter girl!... Why the dickens you don’t kiss Julia and have done with it, Netherby, I can’t make out. Hang it, I have!... It was very nice whilst it lasted, and all that, but there was nothing in it to write poetry about!”

Netherby Gomme flushed.

“Oliver,” said he, with biting distinctness, “we have not yet shown the resentment that your vulgarity courts; but we would remind you that we may be goaded into flinging the office ink-pot——” He stretched out his long arm towards the large zinc well of ink before him.

Noll slid off the stool, putting it between them with the swift and calculated strategy of experience, guarding his head with his raised elbow:

“Chuck it, Netherby!” he bawled, dodging under cover of his desk warily; and he added in a hoarse aside, jerking his thumb towards the editor’s door: “Chuck it! I withdraw.”

The yellow-haired youth put down the heavy ink-pot.

Noll saw out of the corner of his alert eye that honour was satisfied, and as he ran his finger pensively down a large splash of ink that had dried on the wall beside his desk, he asked:

“Well?... About that confidence!”

Netherby Gomme cleared his throat:

“Now, Oliver, don’t say anything about this to anyone. It might make me so ridiculous, and—professional humorists are keenly sensitive to ridicule——”

“Lor!” said Noll, leaving the patch on the wall. “Get on.”

“This is in strict confidence, Noll.”

“Oh, it’s Julia all right enough,” growled Noll.

Gomme went on, ignoring the comment:

“Noll, it is one of the penalties of fame that its victims must appear in the brilliant world of fashion.” He coughed. “Come here, Noll.” He unlocked and pulled open the drawer before him, and Noll, aroused to sudden interest, sidled over to him as he brought out from the drawer a very carefully folded dress-coat. “Oliver, I’ve got a dress-coat. You see, I may have to go into society at any moment, now that my book has caught the public eye.”

Noll put out his hand:

“Let’s look at the thing,” said he eagerly.

Gomme caught his arm and kept him off it:

“Careful, Noll!” he gasped anxiously—“gently! or we shan’t get it back into its folds.”

He put it away carefully, locked it up, and, sitting back in his chair, he added gravely:

“Now, Noll, as one who has knowledge of the usages of polite society——”

“Eh?” said Noll.

Gomme touched him on the shoulder nervously.

“No, no, Noll—I’m not accusing you of practising them. But as one born within the pale of good society—from no fault of your own, I admit—ought one to put scent on the coat?”

Noll whistled:

“Je—hoshaphat!” said he, “I never noticed.” He pushed his hat back on his head, thrust his hands deep into his breeches pockets, and fixed a searching eye on experience: “I’m not sure. N-no—I don’t think so. The governor doesn’t.”

The yellow-haired youth shook his head solemnly:

“It’s a most awkward point, Oliver—a most awkward point—and somewhat momentous.... One’s first step at the threshold of a career should not be a stumble.”

Noll’s face lighted up with a suggestion:

“Tell you what I should do, Netherby. Just scent your handkerchief; and if it kicks up a beastly lot of notice and makes you uncomfortable, you can always get rid of it——”

“Indeed, Oliver!”

“Rather. Hand it to a lady and ask her if it is hers. Gives you a sort of introduction, too.”

Netherby Gomme stared aghast:

“B-but, Oliver, surely one is introduced in society!”

“Rather not—it ain’t form.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know; it’s the new hospitality. But about that scent, Netherby—let us try some on me, and I’ll see if it worries the mother. The father’ll soon be nasty about it if it’s bad form.”

Gomme shook his head, and sighed heavily:

“Ah, Oliver, one has to be very careful in one’s pose on entering a new world.”

Noll nodded:

“Rather!... Do you know, Netherby, it’s a rummy thing how one begins to wash one’s self and think about ornaments and things when one becomes a man, eh?”

“A most rummy thing indeed, Noll.”

Netherby Gomme sighed.

Noll looked at him with interest:

“It must be wonderful to feel famous,” he said.

“It is,” said Gomme gloomily. “Wonderful.”

“But I don’t see why you should be so beastly miserable about it, Netherby. It don’t hurt, does it?”

“Not exactly, Noll.” The yellow-haired youth sighed. “I am only suffering from the mood of the time.... Pessimism is on the town.... A clerk with any claim to culture must affect Decadence this season—and it gives me the hump.” He coughed. “Causes me acute mental discomfort.”

Noll snorted:

“Then I should chuck it,” he said. “When I was a kid I used to worry if I were not the same as the other kids; but—hullo!” He looked up at the clock. “It seems to me it’s about time to go and get tea.”

He winked an eye solemnly at Gomme, and whistled his way airily out of the office. The door swung open, revealing a dingy stair-landing, shut with a bang, and swallowed him.

The sound of Noll’s retreating footsteps on the stair had scarce faded away into the distant echoes of the street, when the door that led to the editor’s room opened, and a well-groomed man of about thirty-five entered the office. Anthony Baddlesmere was a handsome, well-set-up fellow—indeed, it was as much from his father as from his mother that Noll inherited his good looks. He was handsome to the degree of beauty; and this it was, perhaps, which, in spite of the easy carriage of the body and the subtle air of good-breeding, gave the impression of some indecision of character in the man. Or it may have been that this indecision was increased by a certain embarrassment as he endeavoured to get a firm note into his voice:

“Oh, Gomme—have you completed the dummy yet—for this week’s issue?”

Gomme got up from his chair and searched for the dummy amongst the papers on Noll’s desk. But Anthony Baddlesmere had seated himself on the corner of the desk, and, fingering a paper-knife, he said:

“Oh—er—never mind. There’s another matter, Netherby.... It’s some years since I started this sorry venture in this office.” He sighed, and passed his hand over his forehead wearily—“more years than I care to remember. You, the office-boy, were a lank lad of thirteen—I a young man, full of literary enthusiasms.... I tried to sell the public artistic wares”—he shrugged his shoulders—“tried to show them vital things—real things, instead of sham—tried to encourage promising youth”—he laughed sadly—“and a nice waste-paper basket we’ve made of it!”

He swung his foot and kicked the waste-paper basket into the middle of the room, sending its contents flying over the floor.

Netherby Gomme coughed:

“Yes, sir,” said he, “a great deal of the promise of youth goes into the waste-paper basket.”

Anthony Baddlesmere laughed uncomfortably; the laugh died out of his eyes, obliterated by a frown:

“Downstairs,” he went on, as though repeating an unpleasant task he had set himself—“downstairs they have given the public trash—cheap. And I have lost.... In me the literary enthusiasm, a little chilled, perhaps, remains; but the youth has gone. As for you—you are office-boy still, to all purposes, and lank still—but, lord! how you have grown!”

Netherby Gomme looked down at his scanty trousers and sighed:

“Yes, sir, I have grown.”

“H’m! like a scandal,” said Baddlesmere; and a gleam of merriment shot into his eyes, ran round the corners of his mouth, and vanished. “Gomme,” said he, “we are at the end of our resources. This is our last week in these rooms.... The office is bare—my home is bare. All my money—all my wife’s literary success—all have gone to feed the printing machine. It’s great inky maw has swallowed everything.... However, there is no debt—except to you. But that is a heavy one. My conscience tells me that you ought not to have been allowed to remain here and share in the collapse; you ought to have been promoted—to have been sent to—to——”

He hesitated—stopped.

“Where, sir?” asked the yellow-haired youth.

The bald fact was that Baddlesmere had never given the matter a thought until this disaster was upon him. He smiled sadly, and added vaguely:

“No place would have been good enough for you, Gomme.... You should have been promoted long ago....” He roused and faced the position boldly: “But you have been such a good friend to me and to the boy—so useful a part of this office, that I am afraid I have treated you like a part of myself, and have come by habit to think the hat that covered my head covered yours.... Dame Fortune has knocked the hat off—and I find there were two heads inside it.”

“Well, sir, we can look her in the face without the hat.”

“Yes, yes, Gomme—but I have looked over your head.”

“It has saved your eyes from the commonplace, sir, and my heart from a bad chill. I wouldn’t have missed the past years in this office for a fortune.”

“No, no, Gomme; nor I—nor I.”

“They have made a man of me,” the youth added hoarsely.

Baddlesmere put his hand on the other’s shoulder:

“But you should have been promoted—you should have been promoted.... And I could so easily have sent you to a better billet.” He sat down, and, fidgeting with the paper-knife again, he added, after a pause: “By the way, Gomme, I wish you did not write such a shocking bad hand.” He smiled, half jesting, half serious. “Why don’t you practise writing?”

Gomme’s face became a dull, expressionless mask:

“I have, sir,” he said grimly.

“How? You have!”

“I’ve written a book,” he said.

Baddlesmere whistled:

“The devil you have!... Ah, Gomme, everybody writes books nowadays.”

“But they read mine, sir,” said Netherby Gomme. He dived his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, and, taking out a bundle of press-cuttings, drew a much-thumbed one from the others. “Listen to the mighty Thrumsby Burrage in The Discriminator, sir.” He read out the paragraph:

“We have here a refined humorist, whose work is stamped with the hall-mark of genius.”

Baddlesmere nodded; he was only half listening.

“Oh yes,” said he—“hall-mark of genius is Thrumsby Burrage.”

Gomme went on with a yawning travesty of the pulpit manner:

“In the present day it is indeed a veritable intellectual treat to come upon the subtle workmanship of a man of large experience of life—workmanship marked by that delicate wit which grows only to perfection in the cloistered atmosphere of scholarship.”

“Yes—cloistered atmosphere is Thrumsby Burrage.”

Gomme’s eyes twinkled:

“We rejoice that a new man of genius has risen amongst us, and we do not hesitate to say that the anonymous writer of ‘The Tragedy of the Ridiculous’ is that man.”

Anthony Baddlesmere shook off boredom, stood up slowly, stared at the gaunt yellow-haired youth before him in frank tribute of bewilderment, and said at last with hoarse surprise:

“You wrote this book, Gomme?”

“Yes, sir,” said Netherby Gomme simply; “but when I write my tragedy——”

Baddlesmere clapped a hand on his shoulder, and pleasure danced in his eyes.

“But, good God! you are famous, man—famous!... And you must be making a fortune.”

“No, sir—I sold the thing for a few pounds.”

Anthony Baddlesmere strode up and down the room.

“But, man,” said he—“I have been trying all my life, and with every advantage, to create a work of art such as this; and here are you, a mere stripling—damn it, scarcely out of knickerbockers—though, on my soul, you are nearly as old as your trousers—here are you, a mere stripling, famous!” He came to him, gripped him affectionately by the shoulder. “Of all men that I know, I would rather this thing had come to you than to any.” He turned and got to striding up and down the room again. “Famous!—at least you will be as soon as you give out your own name.”

Gomme’s face had flushed a little with the praise:

“But,” said he, “when I write my tragedy——”

Baddlesmere turned on him sharply:

“Tragedy be hanged!” said he. “My dear Gomme, you’ve got to recognise that the world never takes its humorists seriously. It’s always looking for the joke in their tragedies.... Which reminds me, Gomme, I’m afraid to-morrow must see us out of this.”

Gomme’s face lost its mask:

“But, sir!” he faltered—fidgeting nervously with the papers by his hand—“what are you going to do? and Noll?—and Mrs. Baddlesmere—when the blinds are pulled down?”

Baddlesmere strode over to the window, and, gazing down into the dusk of the chilly street below, made no answer. He stood so for a long while, and wondered.

He wondered if he had given the public vital things!

His mind ran rapidly over the failure of his scheme—a scheme that, as he now saw, had been inherent with failure at its very inception. He saw now, as he stood there ruined by it, that it was folly to expect a public to buy literature built up on the mere brilliant literary exercises in technical skill of a smart group of young fellows who had really had no claim upon the consideration of the world, nothing to say, no gift but a capacity to use the machinery of letters prettily; who had had positively nothing to offer to the world but old idioms freshly arrayed in pretty clothes—make-believe kings at a calico-ball. These had been but smart mediocrities—not an ounce of wisdom amongst them all. It came to him now with grim irony, as he stood there in confession to the clear-eyed judge of Self, that for all their cackle of literary style and their contempt for everyone else, these men had uttered no single thought worth preserving—that they had left their youth behind and were growing bald a-top, and full-blown and ordinary—except——

Yes, the work of this Netherby Gomme. He knew now as he ran over the years, that all the best work had come from this youth’s pen—about the only one of them all who had not given himself airs, who had put down the absolute truth as he whimsically saw it, who had worked and wrought amid bare walls and in hours snatched from toil-won leisure, whilst they all sat and prated of what they intended to do, and of how it should be done.

He turned from the window into the lighted office, and his glance fell on his son Noll’s desk. It was the only artistic corner in the room—the prints, mounted on brown paper, which the boy had tacked to the wall, had a decorative effect that showed rare artistic taste in one so young.

A touch of pride came into the man’s eyes, and went out in a frown. Netherby Gomme, watching him in alert silence, with delicate tact uttered no word.

As Baddlesmere moved towards the editor’s room he asked abruptly:

“Where’s Noll?”

“Heaven knows, sir,” said Netherby Gomme airily.

The door closed on the editor, and Gomme heard the slam of the outer door, which told that Baddlesmere had begun to descend the stair.

“Heaven knows!” Gomme shook his head. “Playing with a sewer, most like.... But God is very good to boys.”

CHAPTER II

Wherein it is discovered that, likely enough from an Ancestor who was Master of the Horse to King Harry the Eighth, Master Oliver had inherited some Gift of Horseplay, together with a Keen Eye for a Fine Leg on a Woman.

Netherby Gomme had been sitting some time writing at his desk when the door behind him was stealthily opened and Noll’s head popped round its edge. There was a sharp click of a pea in a tin pea-shooter as the youngster let fly a careful aim at Gomme’s poll.

Gomme jumped, and scratched the back of his neck irritably:

“Curse it, Noll!” he growled testily.

“Naughty!” said Noll, coming into the room, but giving the yellow-haired youth a wide circle as he moved to his desk, and keeping a wary eye on him under a magnificent pretence of carelessness. “Caught you on the raw that time, I think, my ink-stained warrior!” he added cheerfully; but the fire was gone out of the old jest, and it was borne in on the youngster that the oft-repeated joke is somewhat of a damp squib. He broke the tin pea-shooter across his knee, and flung the two pieces into the empty grate. Strolling over to his desk, he took up the office-stool in his arms and carried it to the dusty fireplace. As he scrambled on to the stool Netherby Gomme watched him under his brows.

“I am relieved to see, Noll,” he growled, “that you remember your manhood and your pose as a literary prophet, and intend in future to split hairs instead of spitting peas.” He scratched his head irritably as the other, standing a-tip-toe on the stool, reached up and put back the minute-hand of the clock. “Confound it!” he added, as Noll shut the glass face with a snap, and came down gloomily off his stool—“the whole world seems to be suffering from the vice of forced humour in these days.”

“Don’t be waspish, Netherby,” said the youngster.

He carried the stool back to his desk, took off his silk hat, hung it up, and solemnly mounted into his seat:

“I confess,” he said, and he sighed, “I do feel beastly young at times.”

“H’m!” grunted Netherby Gomme drily—“you weren’t very long over your tea.”

“No.... As a matter of fact, I haven’t had any tea. I had to dodge the governor, so I popped into the office below to call on your little typewriter girl.”

Netherby Gomme moved peevishly in his chair:

“My dear Noll, for Heaven’s sake don’t call Julia my typewriter girl!” said he—“you’d think you were talking of a sewing-machine.”

Noll raised his eyebrows.

“But—she is a bit of a sewing-machine—when she isn’t typewriting.” He suddenly disappeared over the side of the stool and took up a defensive attitude beyond his desk. “Chuck it!” he bawled—“shut up, Netherby!... Put that ink-pot down and I’ll tell you the whole tragedy.”

Noll climbed on to his stool again as the keen glitter went out of Gomme’s eyes, and, sitting perched there with his back against the desk, he said calmly:

“Julia is missing!”

Gomme stared at him anxiously:

“Missing?”

Noll nodded:

“H’m—h’m!” said he. “They are getting rather fussy about it downstairs, and inclined to be nasty.” He assumed an editorial manner and continued: “We regret to state that there has been marked uneasiness at Messrs. Rollit’s typewriting offices owing to the fact that Miss Julia Wynne has not been heard of for the last hour; and this conduct, which might have passed unnoticed in any ordinary female clerk, has caused considerable anxiety in the office where she usually carries on her avocation, for, owing to the regular habits and exemplary conduct of the young person in question, the half-starved beauty of whose Burne-Jones-like profile——”

“We have not yet thrown the office ink-pot, Oliver!” said Netherby Gomme grimly.

Noll, guarding his head with his arm, peered out from beneath his elbow:

“No—but really, Netherby, it was beastly hard luck her being out. I like to go and gaze at her. She has such a jolly nice mouth. I should like to kiss it—it would do her a lot of good....” He disappeared over the stool. “Shut up!” he shouted. “Put it down and I’ll chuck it. I say, Netherby,” he added confidentially, coming out into the open and disarming resentment by trusting Gomme’s honour; “I saw a ripping girl to-day. She gave me quite a thrill.”

Gomme sat back in his chair:

“Indeed, Noll!” said he, putting his fingers together, elbows on chair-arm—“this is most interesting.... What age was the lady?”

“Oh, quite twelve or thirteen. None of your Burne-Jones-like——”

He ducked his head under his arm and made for his desk backwards. He scrambled on to his stool as he saw that the other was not for war:

“No; she was a girl, that! Rich warm hair—reddish. Plumpish. Jolly way of walking....” He paused for a moment and added critically: “She went off a bit in the legs—but—they mostly do at that age.... I offered her chocolates.... She sniffed.”

“Not very encouraging, Oliver!”

“It was rather a blow,” said Noll. “But I think a woman ought to be offish at first. I don’t like ’em too easily captured myself.”

“May I ask,” said Gomme grimly, “if she be a lady of position?”

“Well—her antecedents are somewhat humble. Her father is a—well—he’s a butcher. But every tragedy should have comic relief—shouldn’t it, Netherby?”

Netherby Gomme shook his head solemnly where he sat:

“Noll, you are very, very old. Let us try to be young again.”

“It’s so beastly slow being young,” grumbled Noll. “When I’m a man—Jeroos’lum! I should like to be a man—and shave!”

“And then you’ll damn the razor.... Ah, Noll, it is with the razor that youth cuts its throat.”

There was a long pause. The boy sat brooding on some perplexing problem; the yellow-haired youth watched him.

Noll broke the silence. He slipped down off his high seat, and came over to Gomme:

“I say, Netherby, your book is terrific though!”

“Thanks, Noll—you overwhelm me.... Ah, Noll, if all the world were as prejudiced an admirer as you are—and as frankly honest in the statement of their admiration—I might be a great man.”

“But, Netherby,” said Noll, eyeing him critically—“when did you discover you were clever?”

Gomme coughed:

“Well—er—when people began to tell me my own stories.”

“I wish I could write that sort of comic rot,” said Noll enviously.

“Noll, it is easy enough to be funny. I envy the man of action.”

The yellow-haired youth got up from his chair, lank and lean and awkward, and paced the room with prowling gait.

“To feel the blood tingle through one in hair’s-breadth escapes—to use one’s strength—to live, man, live!... To beat grips with life and danger and death, instead of writing lyrics or other tomfoolery about it, or about what you think other people ought to think about it!”

“Chuck it, Netherby!”

Gomme, pacing up and down the room, took no heed of the interruption.

“Writing history across the face of the world!... That is a bigger thing than spilling ink.... I know what it feels like a little,” he added. “The boxing sergeant knocked me down five times running in rapid succession at the gymnasium last night, and at the first fall I felt the transferred glory of what he must have felt. There is wondrous delight, a sense of the sublime, in conquest—even with the boxing-gloves on!... Of course, now, it would be something to write a tragedy.”

Noll snorted:

“Oh, tragedy’s all piffle! You don’t go to a theatre to sniff.... Give me a jolly good pantomime for an artistic jaunt. Shush! the governor.”

He vaulted on to his desk-stool as the door was flung open.

“Cafoshulam—it’s Julia!” he cried, swinging round on his stool again as the door shut with a slam, and a pretty young woman in neat black dress ran up to Netherby Gomme.

“Oh, Netherby,” she gasped, seizing his arm, “there’s a horror of a man keeps following me about—from the time I was at the coffee-shop—and I’ve been afraid to go back to the office lest he should follow me there. And so, at last, I’ve run up here. What am I to do? The man frightens me out of my wits.”

“Hush, Julia—keep calm.”

Gomme stroked her hand, and, leading her quickly to the editor’s room, threw open the door:

“Quick, Julia—in here!”

Julia grasped his arm as he was about to shut the door upon her:

“No personal violence, please, Netherby. You won’t hurt him—will you?”

“My dear Julia,” said he, hurrying her into the room, “I am surprised at such a suggestion!” He shut the door, and, turning his back upon it, he added grimly: “Personal violence is quite contrary to the traditions of this office, Noll—it should, in our judgment, be the very last resource.” He coughed. “The office broom, I fear, Noll, is in the editor’s cupboard——”

Noll whooped:

“Hooroosh!” cried he—“we haven’t had a row in the office for nearly five weeks!”

There was a loud knock.

Noll whipped round on his high stool, and was immediately engrossed in the heavy work of his office.

“Come in!” cried Netherby Gomme.

The door on to the landing was thrown open and revealed the figure of an elaborately dressed exquisite, who entered the room deliberately, diffusing scents—one of those well-polished, shining beings who never seem to catch a speck of dust. He had an hereditary qualification to pass for a gentleman—he knew how to dress for the part. He could strain good taste in adornment to the uttermost stretch without breaking it. He stood with the arrogant self-assurance that largely stands for good-breeding amongst the inane, and though the perfection of his clothes’ fit could not hide the fact that the lamp of intelligence burnt but gutteringly at the top where were his wits, he had the self-respect to ignore his defects. He looked calmly round the room, and, taking a card with deliberate coolness from a silver cardcase, he asked:

“Will someone—ah—kindly give my card to—ah—that most comely young lady who—ah—has just come in?”