CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
At noon of the next day I gave Fox his look in at his own flat. He wasstretched upon a sofa--it was evident that I was to take such of hisduties as were takeable. He greeted me with words to that effect.
"Don't go filling the paper with your unbreeched geniuses," he said,genially, "and don't overwork yourself. There's really nothing to do,but you're being there will keep that little beast Evans from gettingtoo cock-a-hoop. He'd like to jerk me out altogether; thinks they'd geton just as well without me."
I expressed in my manner general contempt for Evans, and was taking myleave.
"Oh, and--" Fox called after me. I turned back. "The Greenland mailought to be in to-day. If Callan's contrived to get his flood-gates open,run his stuff in, there's a good chap. It's a feature and all that, youknow."
"I suppose Soane's to have a look at it," I asked.
"Oh, yes," he answered; "but tell him to keep strictly to old Cal'slines--rub that into him. If he were to get drunk and run in some of hisown tips it'd be awkward. People are expecting Cal's stuff. Tell youwhat: you take him out to lunch, eh? Keep an eye on the supplies, andram it into him that he's got to stick to Cal's line of argument."
"Soane's as bad as ever, then?" I asked.
"Oh," Fox answered, "he'll be all right for the stuff if you get thatone idea into him." A prolonged and acute fit of pain seized him. Ifetched his man and left him to his rest.
At the office of the _Hour_ I was greeted by the handing to me of aproof of Callan's manuscript. Evans, the man across the screen, was theimmediate agent.
"I suppose it's got to go in, so I had it set up," he said.
"Oh, of course it's got to go in," I answered. "It's to go to Soanefirst, though."
"Soane's not here yet," he answered. I noted the tone of sub-acidpleasure in his voice. Evans would have enjoyed a fiasco.
"Oh, well," I answered, nonchalantly, "there's plenty of time. Youallow space on those lines. I'll send round to hunt Soane up."
I felt called to be upon my mettle. I didn't much care about the paper,but I had a definite antipathy to being done by Evans--by a mad Welshmanin a stubborn fit. I knew what was going to happen; knew that Evanswould feign inconceivable stupidity, the sort of black stupidity that isat command of individuals of his primitive race. I was in for a day ofpetty worries. In the circumstances it was a thing to be thankful for;it dragged my mind away from larger issues. One has no time for broodingwhen one is driving a horse in a jibbing fit.
Evans was grimly conscious that I was moderately ignorant of technicaldetails; he kept them well before my eyes all day long.
At odd moments I tried to read Callan's article. It was impossible. Itopened with a description of the squalor of the Greenlander's life, andcontained tawdry passages of local colour.
I knew what was coming. This was the view of the Greenlanders ofpre-Merschian Greenland, elaborated, after the manner of Callan--theSpecial Commissioner--so as to bring out the glory and virtue of thework of regeneration. Then in a gush of superlatives the work itselfwould be described. I knew quite well what was coming, and wastemperamentally unable to read more than the first ten lines.
Everything was going wrong. The printers developed one of their suddencrazes for asking idiotic questions. Their messengers came to Evans,Evans sent them round the pitch-pine screen to me. "Mr. Jackson wants toknow----"
The fourth of the messengers that I had despatched to Soane returnedwith the news that Soane would arrive at half-past nine. I sent out insearch of the strongest coffee that the city afforded. Soane arrived. Hehad been ill, he said, very ill. He desired to be fortified withchampagne. I produced the coffee.
Soane was the son of an Irish peer. He had magnificent features--alittle blurred nowadays--and a remainder of the grand manner. His nosewas a marvel of classic workmanship, but the floods of time had reddenedand speckled it--not offensively, but ironically; his hair was turninggrey, his eyes were bloodshot, his heavy moustache rather ragged. Heinspired one with the respect that one feels for a man who has lived anddoes not care a curse. He had a weird intermittent genius that made itworth Fox's while to put up with his lapses and his brutal snubs.
I produced the coffee and pointed to the sofa of the night before.
"Damn it," he said, "I'm ill, I tell you; I want ..."
"Exactly!" I cut in. "You want a rest, old fellow. Here's Cal's article.We want something special about it. If you don't feel up to it I'll sendround to Jenkins."
"Damn Jenkins," he said; "I'm up to it."
"You understand," I said, "you're to write strictly on Callan's lines.Don't insert any information from extraneous sources. And make it asslashing as you like--on those lines."
He grunted in acquiescence. I left him lying on the sofa, drinking thecoffee. I had tenderly arranged the lights for him as Fox had arrangedthem the night before. As I went out to get my dinner I was comfortablyaware of him, holding the slips close to his muddled eyes andphilosophically damning the nature of things.
When I returned, Soane, from his sofa, said something that I did notcatch--something about Callan and his article.
"Oh, for God's sake," I answered, "don't worry me. Have some more coffeeand stick to Cal's line of argument. That's what Fox said. I'm notresponsible."
"Deuced queer," Soane muttered. He began to scribble with a pencil. Fromthe tone of his voice I knew that he had reached the precise stage atwhich something brilliant--the real thing of its kind--might beexpected.
Very late Soane finished his leader. He looked up as he wrote the lastword.
"I've got it written," he said. "But ... I say, what the deuce is up?It's like being a tall clock with the mainspring breaking, this."
I rang the bell for someone to take the copy down.
"Your metaphor's too much for me, Soane," I said.
"It's appropriate all the way along," he maintained, "if you call me amainspring. I've been wound up and wound up to write old de Mersch andhis Greenland up--and it's been a tight wind, these days, I tell you.Then all of a sudden ..."
A boy appeared and carried off the copy.
"All of a sudden," Soane resumed, "something gives--I supposesomething's given--and there's a whirr-rr-rr and the hands fly backwardsand old de Mersch and Greenland bump to the bottom, like the weights."
The boom of the great presses was rattling the window frames. Soane gotup and walked toward one of the cupboards.
"Dry work," he said; "but the simile's just, isn't it?"
I gave one swift step toward the bell-button beside the desk. The proofof Callan's article, from which Soane had been writing, lay a crumpledwhite streamer on the brown wood of Fox's desk. I made toward it. As Istretched out my hand the solution slipped into my mind, coming with nomore noise than that of a bullet; impinging with all the shock andremaining with all the pain. I had remembered the morning, over there inParis, when she had told me that she had invited one of de Mersch'slieutenants to betray him by not concealing from Callan the realhorrors of the Systeme Groenlandais--flogged, butchered, miserablenatives, the famines, the vices, diseases, and the crimes. There camesuddenly before my eyes the tall narrow room in my aunt's house, theopening of the door and her entry, followed by that of the woebegonegovernor of a province--the man who was to show Callan things--with hisgrating "_Cest entendu ..._"
I remembered the scene distinctly; her words; her looks; my utterunbelief. I remembered, too, that it had not saved me from a momentarysense of revolt against that inflexible intention of a treachery whichwas to be another step toward the inheritance of the earth. I hadrejected the very idea, and here it had come; it was confronting me withall its meaning and consequences. Callan _had_ been shown things he hadnot been meant to see, and had written the truth as he had seen it. Hisarticle was a small thing in itself, but he had been sent out there withtremendous flourishes of de Mersch's trumpets. He was _the_ man whocould be believed. De Mersch's supporters had practically said: "If hecondemns us we are indeed damned
." And now that the condemnation hadcome, it meant ruin, as it seemed to me, for everybody I had known,worked for, seen, or heard of, during the last year of my life. It wasruin for Fox, for Churchill, for the ministers, and for the men who talkin railway carriages, for shopkeepers and for the government; it was amenace to the institutions which hold us to the past, that are ourguarantees for the future. The safety of everything one respected andbelieved in was involved in the disclosure of an atrocious fraud, andthe disclosure was in my hands. For that night I had the power of thepress in my keeping. People were waiting for this pronouncement. DeMersch's last card was his philanthropy; his model state and his happynatives.
The drone of the presses made the floor under my feet quiver, and thewhole building vibrated as if the earth itself had trembled. I was alonewith my knowledge. Did she know; had she put the power in my hand? But Iwas alone, and I was free.
I took up the proof and began to read, slanting the page to the fall ofthe light. It was a phrenetic indictment, but under the paltry rhetoricof the man there was genuine indignation and pain. There were revoltingdetails of cruelty to the miserable, helpless, and defenceless; therewere greed, and self-seeking, stripped naked; but more revolting to seewithout a mask was that falsehood which had been hiding under the wordsthat for ages had spurred men to noble deeds, to self-sacrifice, toheroism. What was appalling was the sudden perception that all thetraditional ideals of honour, glory, conscience, had been committed tothe upholding of a gigantic and atrocious fraud. The falsehood hadspread stealthily, had eaten into the very heart of creeds andconvictions that we lean upon on our passage between the past and thefuture. The old order of things had to live or perish with a lie. I sawall this with the intensity and clearness of a revelation; I saw it asthough I had been asleep through a year of work and dreams, and hadawakened to the truth. I saw it all; I saw her intention. What was I todo?
Without my marking its approach emotion was upon me. The fingers thatheld up the extended slips tattooed one on another through itsnegligible thickness.
"Pretty thick that," Soane said. He was looking back at me from thecupboard he had opened. "I've rubbed it in, too ... there'll be hats onthe green to-morrow." He had his head inside the cupboard, and his voicecame to me hollowly. He extracted a large bottle with a gilt-foiledneck.
"Won't it upset the apple cart to-morrow," he said, very loudly; "won'tit?"
His voice acted on me as the slight shake upon a phial full of waitingchemicals; crystallised them suddenly with a little click. Everythingsuddenly grew very clear to me. I suddenly understood that all thetortuous intrigue hinged upon what I did in the next few minutes. Itrested with me now to stretch out my hand to that button in the wall orto let the whole world--"the ... the probity ... that sort of thing,"she had said--fall to pieces. The drone of the presses continued to makeitself felt like the quiver of a suppressed emotion. I might stop themor I might not. It rested with me.
Everybody was in my hands; they were quite small. If I let the thing goon, they would be done for utterly, and the new era would begin.
Soane had got hold of a couple of long-stalked glasses. They clinkedtogether whilst he searched the cupboard for something.
"Eh, what?" he said. "It _is_ pretty _strong_, isn't it? Ought to shakeout some of the supporters, eh? Bill comes on to-morrow ... do for that,I should think." He wanted a corkscrew very badly.
But that was precisely it--it would "shake out some of the supporters,"and give Gurnard his patent excuse. Churchill, I knew, would stick tohis line, the saner policy. But so many of the men who had stuck toChurchill would fall away now, and Gurnard, of course, would lead themto his own triumph.
It was a criminal verdict. Callan had gone out as a commissioner--with agood deal of drum-beating. And this was his report, this shriek. If itsounded across the house-tops--if I let it--good-by to the saner policyand to Churchill. It did not make any difference that Churchill's _was_the saner policy, because there was no one in the nation sane enough tosee it. They wanted purity in high places, and here was a definite,criminal indictment against de Mersch. And de Mersch would--in a mannerof speaking, have to be lynched, policy or no policy.
She wanted this, and in all the earth she was the only desirable thing.If I thwarted her--she would ... what would she do now? I looked atSoane.
"What would happen if I stopped the presses?" I asked. Soane wastwisting his corkscrew in the wire of the champagne bottle.
It was fatal; I could see nothing on earth but her. What else was therein the world. Wine? The light of the sun? The wind on the heath? Honour!My God, what was honour to me if I could see nothing but her on earth?Would honour or wine or sun or wind ever give me what she could give?Let them go.
"What would happen if what?" Soane grumbled, "_D--n_ this wire."
"Oh, I was thinking about something," I answered. The wire gave with alittle snap and he began to ease the cork. Was I to let the light passme by for the sake of ... of Fox, for instance, who trusted me? Well,let Fox go. And Churchill and what Churchill stood for; the probity; thegreatness and the spirit of the past from which had sprung myconscience and the consciences of the sleeping millions around me--thewoman at the poultry show with her farmers and shopkeepers. Let them gotoo.
Soane put into my hand one of his charged glasses. He seemed to rise outof the infinite, a forgotten shape. I sat down at the desk opposite him.
"Deuced good idea," he said, suddenly, "to stop the confounded pressesand spoof old Fox. He's up to some devilry. And, by Jove, I'd like toget my knife in him; Jove, I would. And then chuck up everything andleave for the Sandwich Islands. I'm sick of this life, this dog'slife.... One might have made a pile though, if one'd known this smashwas coming. But one can't get at the innards of things.--No suchluck--no such luck, eh?" I looked at him stupidly; took in hisblood-shot eyes and his ruffled grizzling hair. I wondered who he was._"Il s'agissait de_...?" I seemed to be back in Paris, I couldn't thinkof what I had been thinking of. I drank his glass of wine and he filledme another. I drank that too.
Ah yes--even then the thing wasn't settled, even now that I hadrecognized that Fox and the others were of no account ... What remainedwas to prove to her that I wasn't a mere chattel, a piece in the game. Iwas at the very heart of the thing. After all, it was chance that hadput me there, the blind chance of all the little things that lead in theinevitable, the future. If, now, I thwarted her, she would ... whatwould she do? She would have to begin all over again. She wouldn't wantto be revenged; she wasn't revengeful. But how if she would never lookupon me again?
The thing had reduced itself to a mere matter of policy. Or was itpassion?
A clatter of the wheels of heavy carts and of the hoofs of heavy horseson granite struck like hammer blows on my ears, coming from the well ofthe court-yard below. Soane had finished his bottle and was walking tothe cupboard. He paused at the window and stood looking down.
"Strong beggars, those porters," he said; "I couldn't carry that weightof paper--not with my rot on it, let alone Callan's. You'd think itwould break down the carts."
I understood that they were loading the carts for the newspaper mails.There was still time to stop them. I got up and went toward the window,very swiftly. I was going to call to them to stop loading. I threw thecasement open.
* * * * *
Of course, I did not stop them. The solution flashed on me with thebreath of the raw air. It was ridiculously simple. If I thwarted her,well, she would respect me. But her business in life was the inheritanceof the earth, and, however much she might respect me--or by so much themore--she would recognise that I was a force to deflect her from theright line--"a disease for me," she had said.
"What I have to do," I said, "is to show her that ... that I had her inmy hands and that I co-operated loyally."
The thing was so simple that I triumphed; triumphed with the full glowof wine, triumphed looking down into that murky court-yard where thelanthorns danced about in the rays of
a great arc lamp. The gilt lettersscattered all over the windows blazed forth the names of Fox'sinnumerable ventures. Well, he ... he had been a power, but I triumphed.I had co-operated loyally with the powers of the future, though Iwanted no share in the inheritance of the earth. Only, I was going topush into the future. One of the great carts got into motion amidst ashower of sounds that whirled upward round and round the well. The blackhood swayed like the shoulders of an elephant as it passed beneath myfeet under the arch. It disappeared--it was co-operating too; in a fewhours people at the other end of the country--of the world--would beraising their hands. Oh, yes, it was co-operating loyally.
I closed the window. Soane was holding a champagne bottle in one hand.In the other he had a paper knife of Fox's--a metal thing, a Japanesedagger or a Deccan knife. He sliced the neck off the bottle.
"Thought you were going to throw yourself out," he said; "I wouldn'tstop you. _I'm_ sick of it ... sick."
"Look at this ... to-night ... this infernal trick of Fox's.... And Ihelped too.... Why?... I must eat." He paused "... and drink," headded. "But there is starvation for no end of fools in this littlemove. A few will be losing their good names too.... I don't care, I'moff.... By-the-bye: What is he doing it for? Money? Funk?--You ought toknow. You must be in it too. It's not hunger with you. Wonderful whatpeople will do to keep their pet vice going.... Eh?" He swayed a little."You don't drink--what's your pet vice?"
He looked at me very defiantly, clutching the neck of the empty bottle.His drunken and overbearing glare seemed to force upon me a complicityin his squalid bargain with life, rewarded by a squalid freedom. He waspitiful and odious to my eyes; and somehow in a moment he appearedmenacing.
"You can't frighten me," I said, in response to the strange fear he hadinspired. "No one can frighten me now." A sense of my inaccessibilitywas the first taste of an achieved triumph. I had done with fear. Thepoor devil before me appeared infinitely remote. He was lost; but he wasonly one of the lost; one of those that I could see already overwhelmedby the rush from the flood-gates opened at my touch. He would bedestroyed in good company; swept out of my sight together with the pastthey had known and with the future they had waited for. But he wasodious. "I am done with you," I said.
"Eh; what?... Who wants to frighten?... I wanted to know what's your petvice.... Won't tell? You might safely--I'm off.... No.... Want to tellme mine?... No time.... I'm off.... Ask the policeman ... crossingsweeper will do.... I'm going."
"You will have to," I said.
"What.... Dismiss me?... Throw the indispensable Soane overboard like asqueezed lemon?... Would you?... What would Fox say?... Eh? But youcan't, my boy--not you. Tell you ... tell you ... can't.... Beforehandwith you ... sick of it.... I'm off ... to the Islands--the Islands ofthe Blest.... I'm going to be an ... no, not an angel like Fox ... an... oh, a beachcomber. Lie on white sand, in the sun ... blue sky andpalm-trees--eh?... S.S. Waikato. I'm off.... Come too ... lark ...dismiss yourself out of all this. Warm sand, warm, mind you ... youwon't?" He had an injured expression. "Well, I'm off. See me into thecab, old chap, you're a decent fellow after all ... not one of thesebeggars who would sell their best friend ... for a little money ... orsome woman. Will see the last of me...."
I didn't believe he would reach the South Seas, but I went downstairsand watched him march up the street with a slight stagger under thepallid dawn. I suppose it was the lingering chill of the night that mademe shiver. I felt unbounded confidence in the future, there was nothingnow between her and me. The echo of my footsteps on the flagstonesaccompanied me, filling the empty earth with the sound of my progress.