Mightier than the Sword

If you had been standing on a certain cold night in January opposite the great building where The Day is jewelled in electric lights across the dark sky, you would have seen a little, stout man run down the steps of the entrance at the side, three at a time, land on the pavement as if he were preparing to leap the roadway, with the sheer impetus of the flight of steps behind him, and had suddenly thought better of it, glance hurriedly at the big, lighted clock whose hands, formed of the letters T-H-E D-A-Y, in red and green electric lights, showed that it was nearly half-past twelve, and sudde

nly start off in a terrible hurry towards Chancery Lane, as though pursued by some awful thing.

Considering the bulkiness of the little man, he ran remarkably well. He dodged a light newspaper van that was coming recklessly round Fetter Lane, for there was none of the crowded traffic of daylight to be negotiated, and then, he turned the corner of Chancery Lane-and there you would have seen the last of him. He would have vanished from your life, a stumpy little man, with an umbrella popped under one arm, a bundle of papers grasped in his hand, a hat jammed down on[12] his head, and the ends of a striped muffler floating in the breeze of his own making.

The sight of a man running, even in these days when life itself goes with a rush, is sufficient to awaken comment in the mind of the onlooker. It suggests pursuit, the recklessness of other days; it impels, instinctively, the cry of "Stop, thief," for no man runs unless he is hunted by a powerful motive. Therefore it may be assumed that since I have sent a man bolting hard out of your sight up the lamp-lit avenue of Chancery Lane, you are wondering why the devil he's in such a hurry.

Well, he was hurrying because the last train to Shepherd's Bush goes at 12.35, and, as he had been away from home since ten o'clock that morning, he was rather anxious to get back. He could not afford a cab fare, though only a few hours ago he had been eating oysters, bisque soup, turbot, pheasant, asparagus out of season and pêche Melba at the Savoy Hotel with eighteenpence in his pocket-and the odd pence had gone to the waiter and the cloakroom man. So that by the time he had reached the top of Chancery Lane, dashed across the road and through the door of the station, where a porter would have slammed the grille in another second, and bought his ticket with an explosive, panting "Bush," he had just tenpence left.

The lift-man knew him, nodded affably and said: "Just in time, Mr Pride."

"A hard run," said Mr Pride; and then with a cheery smile, "never mind; good for the liver." There were only a few people in the lift-four men and a woman to be precise. He knew the men as casual acquaintances of the last tube train. There was Denning, a sporting sub-editor on The Lantern; another was a proof-reader on one of the afternoon papers, who finished[13] work in the evening but never went home before the last tube; then there was Harlem, the librarian of The Day, an amazing man who spoke all the European languages, and some of the Asiatic ones after his fifth glass of beer; the fourth was a friend of Harlem, a moody young man who wore his hair long, smoked an evil-looking pipe, and seemed to be a little unsteady on his feet. As for the woman, Pride knew her well by sight. She had hair that was of an unreal yellow, and a latch-key dangled from her little finger as though it were a new kind of ring. She always got out at Tottenham Court Road.

As the lift went down, its high complaining noise falling to a low buzzing sound seemed like the tired murmur of a weary human being glad that rest had come at last. The sound of the approaching train came rolling through the tunnel. They all rushed desperately down the short flight of steps that led to the platform, as the train came in with a rattle of doors opening and slamming, and scrambled for seats, while the uniformed men, who appeared to be the only thoroughly wide-awake people in the neighbourhood, said in the most contradictory fashion: "Stand clear of the gates," "Hurry on, please," and "Passengers off first."

Pride found himself in the smoking carriage, opposite Harlem, with his young friend at his side. It never occurred to him that there was anything exceptional in his dash for the last train. He did it four nights out of the week, as a matter of course. He was fifty years old, though he pretended he was ten years younger, and shaved his face clean to keep up the illusion. He used to explain to his friends that he came of a family famous for baldness in early years.

"Been busy?" asked Harlem, filling his pipe.

"Nothing to speak of," said Pride. "Turned up at[14] the office at eleven, but there was nothing doing until after lunch. Then I had to go and see Sir William Darton-they're going to start the Thames Steamboats again. He wasn't at home, and he wasn't in his office, but I found him at six o'clock in the Constitutional. Got back and found they'd sent home for my dress clothes, and left a nice little envelope with the ticket of the Canadian Dinner.... That's why I'm so late to-night...."

Pride filled his own pipe, and sighed. "The old days are over!" he said. "They used to post our assignments overnight-'Dear Mr Pride, kindly do a quarter of a column of the enclosed meeting.' Why, The Sentinel used to allow us five shillings every time we put on evening dress."

"Well, The Sentinel was a pretty dull paper before the Kelmscotts bought it and turned it into a halfpenny," said Harlem. "Look at it now, a nice, bright paper-oh, by the way, do you know Cannock," he jerked his head to the man at his side. "He's The Sentinel's latest acquisition. This is Tommy Pride, one of the ancient bulwarks of The Sentinel, until they fired him. Now he's learning to be a halfpenny journalist."

Pride looked at the young man.

"I don't know about being the latest acquisition," Cannock said. "As a matter of fact, they've fired me to-day."

"It's a hobby of theirs now," Harlem remarked. "You'll get a job on The Day if you ask for one. There's always room with us, ain't there, Tommy?"

Pride looked wistfully at the clouds of blue smoke that rose from his lips.... Yes, he thought, there was always room on The Day-at any moment they might decide to make alterations in the staff. The fact[15] of Cannock's being sacked mattered nothing; he was a young man, and for young men, knocking at the door of Fleet Street, there was always an open pathway. Think of the papers there were left to work for-the evenings and the dailies, and even when they were exhausted, perhaps a job on a weekly paper, or the editorship of one of the scores of penny and sixpenny magazines. And, after that, the provinces and the suburbs had their papers. Pride knew: in his long experience he had wandered from one paper to another, two years here, three years here, until the halfpenny papers had brought a new type of journalist into the street.

"Married?" asked Pride.

"Not me!" replied Cannock, with a slight hiccough.

"Well, you're all right. You can free-lance if you want to."

"Oh, it's no good to me," Cannock said. "It's a dog's life anyhow, and I've only had two months of it. I'm going back to my guv'nor's business."

"Ah," said Pride, "there's no use wasting sympathy on you. Why did you ever leave it? What's his business?"

"That," Cannock laughed gaily and pointed to a poster as the train stopped at Tottenham Court Road Station. It was a great picture of barrels and barrels of beer, piled one above the other, reaching away into the far distance. Thousands of barrels under a vaulted roof. And in the foreground were little figures of men in white aprons with red jersey caps on their heads, rolling in more barrels, with their arms bared to the elbows. Across the picture in large letters Pride could read: "Cannock Brothers, Holloway. Cannock's Entire."

"Why, your people are worth millions!" Pride said. "What on earth are you doing in journalism."

[16]

"I know they are. That's what I was thinking of yesterday. I wondered how on earth they got anybody to do the work."

"Well, you won't mind me, I'm sure," Pride said, leaning over to Cannock. "I'm older than you, and I belong to what they call the old school of journalism. This isn't the lovely life some people think it must be, and it's going to get worse each year. We've got to fight for our jobs every day of our life. 'Making good,' they call it. I'm used to it," he said defiantly, looking at Harlem, "I like it.... I couldn't do anything else. I'm not fit for anything else. It has its lazy moments, too, and its moments of excitement and thrills. No, my son, you go back to the brewery, there's more money in it for you and all the glory you want with your name plastered over every bottle and on all the walls. Ask five hundred men in the street if they've ever heard of Tommy Pride. They've been reading things I've written every day, but they don't know who's written them. Ask 'em who's Cannock? Why, they'll turn mechanically into the nearest public-house and call for a bottle of you."

"I used to think it would be jolly to be on a newspaper," Cannock said. "My guv'nor got me the job. He's something to do with the Kelmscotts."

"So it is if you're meant to be on a newspaper. That's the trouble of fellows like you. You come out of nowhere, or from the 'Varsity, and get plunked right down in the heart of a London newspaper office-probably someone's fired to make room for you. You're friends of the editor and you think you're great men, until you find you're expected to take your turn with the rest. Then you grouse, because you're not meant for it. You've got appointments to keep at dinner-time, and you must get your meals regularly. Or you[17] want to write fine stuff and be great star descriptive men at once, or go to Persia and Timbuctoo, and live on flam and signed articles. But, if you were meant to be a reporter, you'd hang round the news editor's room for any job that came along, you'd take any old thing that was given you, and do it without a murmur, and when you've done that for thirty years you might meet success, and stay on until they shoved you out of the office."

He saw that Cannock was smiling, and seemed to read his thoughts.

"Me?" he said. "Oh, you mustn't judge by me. I belong to the old school, you know. I'm the son of my father-he was a Gallery man, and died worth three hundred pounds, and that's more than I am. I'm one of the products of the last generation, and all I want is ￡2 a week and a cottage in the country." The little man relit his pipe, and puffed contentedly. "Lord! I should like that!" he said.

"You're always frightened of being fired, Tommy," said Harlem. "You know well enough you're what we call a thoroughly reliable and experienced man, and Ferrol wouldn't have you sacked."

"There's always that bogy," Pride answered with a laugh. "You never know what may happen. The only thing is to join the Newspaper Press Fund and trust in the Lord. None of the youngsters do either of these things to-day."

Cannock and Harlem prepared to leave as the train slowed down before Marble Arch. "It's a rotten game," said Cannock. "I'm glad I'm out of it. Good-bye."

Pride took his hand. "Good-bye." He saw them pass the window, and wave to him as they went under the lighted "Way Out" sign, and then he turned to his papers with a sigh. But somehow or other he did not[18] read. He always carried papers about with him, through sheer force of habit, much as the under side of a tailor's coat lapel is bristling with pins. He had been with news all day; he had written some of it; he had read the same things in the different editions of the newspapers; he had left the street when they were printing more news; and the first thing he would do on waking up in the morning would be to reach out for a copy of The Day which was brought with the morning tea. He did not read news as the average man does-he regarded it objectively, reading it without emotion. The march of the world, the daily happenings moved him as much as a packet of loose diamonds moves the jeweller who handles them daily, and weighs them to see their worth.

He was thinking of Cannock, with his future all clear before him: Cannock, with beer woven into the fibre of his being, as news was in his. It must be rather fine to be independent like that.... Idly, he wondered what Cannock's guv'nor was like: did he admire these pictures of the vast hall crowded with beer barrels, enough to last London for a whole Saturday night, and ready to be filled up again for all the nights in the week.... He looked round the carriage at the faces of those who were travelling with him. Five boisterous young people were making themselves a noisy nuisance at one end of the carriage. Opposite him, in the seat lately occupied by Harlem, a working man was staring ahead of him with an empty wide stare as if, in a moment of absent-mindedness, his actual self had slipped away, and left a hulk of shabbily-clothed body, without a spark of intelligence. Others were nodding, half asleep, and there was one man, with closed eyes, and parted lips, breathing stertorously, whose head bobbled from side to side with the rocking of the[19] train.... He woke up, suddenly, as the train stopped with a jerk, and the conductor called out "'Perd's Bush."

Tommy Pride always gave his papers to the lift-man. They waited for the last passenger, who came lurching round the corner with his head still bobbling and his eyes half lost below the drooping eyelids. He steadied himself against the wall-and his hand spread over another of those glorious posters. What a picture for Cannock!... Somehow, Pride rejoiced to think that he was not Cannock.

He went past the Green to one of the small houses in a turning off the Uxbridge Road. The moon shone out of the wintry sky, white and placid, above his home. He let himself in, and turned out the flicker of gas in the hall. He walked on tiptoe into the sitting-room, and having taken off his boots went to the fireplace. Here on a trivet he found a cup of cocoa, and his slippers warming before the fire. There were three slices of thin bread and butter on the table. He never went to bed without his bread and butter. During his meal he saw a copy of The Day on a chair, and he read bits of it mechanically, for he had read it all before. The clock struck one, and he bolted the front door and went softly upstairs. As he turned on the light his wife stirred uneasily, and he came to the bedside. She opened her eyes at his kiss, and smiled tenderly at him.

"Is it very late, dear?" she asked.

"One o'clock."

"Poor sweetheart!" she murmured. "Did you have your cocoa?"

"Yes," he said.

"Tired?"

He laughed. "Not very. I'm a bit cheerful, to tell you the truth. Tell you about it in the morning. Ferrol spoke to me to-day. He's a fine chap."