I had a pretty bad night after that, and was not much in the mood for
Fox on the morrow. The sight of her had dwarfed everything; the thought
of her disgusted me with everything, made me out of conceit with the
world--with that part of the world that had become my world. I wanted to
get up into hers--and I could not see any way. The room in which Fox sat
seemed to be hopelessly off the road--to be hopelessly off any road to
any place; to be the end of a blind alley. One day I might hope to
occupy such a room--in my shirt-sleeves, like Fox. But that was not the
end of my career--not the end that I desired. She had upset me.
"You've just missed Polehampton," Fox said; "wanted to get hold of your
'Atmospheres.'"
"Oh, damn Polehampton," I said, "and particularly damn the
'Atmospheres.'"
"Willingly," Fox said, "but I told Mr. P. that you were willing if...."
"I don't want to know," I repeated. "I tell you I'm sick of the
things."
"What a change," he asserted, sympathetically, "I _thought_ you would."
It struck me as disgusting that a person like Fox should think about me
at all. "Oh, I'll see it through," I said. "Who's the next?"
"We've got to have the Duc de Mersch now," he answered, "De Mersch as
State Founder--written as large as you can--all across the page. The
moment's come and we've got to rope it in, that's all. I've been
middling good to you.... You understand...."
He began to explain in his dark sentences. The time had come for an
energetically engineered boom in de Mersch--a boom all along the line.
And I was to commence the campaign. Fox had been good to me and I was to
repay him. I listened in a sort of apathetic indifference.
"Oh, very well," I said. I was subconsciously aware that, as far as I
was concerned, the determining factor of the situation was the
announcement that de Mersch was to be in Paris. If he had been in his
own particular grand duchy I wouldn't have gone after him. For a moment
I thought of the interview as taking place in London. But
Fox--ostensibly, at least--wasn't even aware of de Mersch's visit; spoke
of him as being in Paris--in a flat in which he was accustomed to
interview the continental financiers who took up so much of his time.
I realised that I wanted to go to Paris because she was there. She had
said that she was going to Paris on the morrow of yesterday. The name
was pleasant to me, and it turned the scale.
Fox's eyes remained upon my face.
"Do you good, eh?" he dimly interpreted my thoughts. "A run over. I
thought you'd like it and, look here, Polehampton's taken over the
_Bi-Monthly_; wants to get new blood into it, see? He'd take something.
I've been talking to him--a short series.... 'Aspects.' That sort of
thing." I tried to work myself into some sort of enthusiasm of
gratitude. I knew that Fox had spoken well of me to Polehampton--as a
sort of set off.
"You go and see Mr. P.," he confirmed; "it's really all arranged. And
then get off to Paris as fast as you can and have a good time."
"Have I been unusually cranky lately?" I asked.
"Oh, you've been a little off the hooks, I thought, for the last week or
so."
He took up a large bottle of white mucilage, and I accepted it as a sign
of dismissal. I was touched by his solicitude for my health. It always
did touch me, and I found myself unusually broad-minded in thought as I
went down the terra-cotta front steps into the streets. For all his
frank vulgarity, for all his shirt-sleeves--I somehow regarded that
habit of his as the final mark of the Beast--and the Louis Quinze
accessories, I felt a warm good-feeling for the little man.
I made haste to see Polehampton, to beard him in a sort of den that
contained a number of shelves of books selected for their glittering
back decoration. They gave the impression that Mr. Polehampton wished to
suggest to his visitors the fitness and propriety of clothing their
walls with the same gilt cloth. They gave that idea, but I think that,
actually, Mr. Polehampton took an aesthetic delight in the gilding. He
was not a publisher by nature. He had drifted into the trade and
success, but beneath a polish of acquaintance retained a fine awe for a
book as such. In early life he had had such shining things on a shiny
table in a parlour. He had a similar awe for his daughter, who had been
born after his entry into the trade, and who had the literary flavour--a
flavour so pronounced that he dragged her by the heels into any
conversation with us who hewed his raw material, expecting, I suppose,
to cow us. For the greater good of this young lady he had bought the
_Bi-Monthly_--one of the portentous political organs. He had, they said,
ideas of forcing a seat out of the party as a recompense.
It didn't matter much what was the nature of my series of articles. I
was to get the atmosphere of cities as I had got those of the various
individuals. I seemed to pay on those lines, and Miss Polehampton
commended me.
"My daughter likes ... eh ... your touch, you know, and...." His terms
were decent--for the man, and were offered with a flourish that
indicated special benevolence and a reference to the hundred pounds. I
was at a loss to account for his manner until he began to stammer out an
indication. Its lines were that I knew Fox, and I knew Churchill and
the Duc de Mersch, and the _Hour_. "And those financial articles ... in
the _Hour_ ... were they now?... _Were_ they ... was the Trans
-Greenland railway actually ... did I think it would be worth one's
while ... in fact...." and so on.
I never was any good in a situation of that sort, never any good at all.
I ought to have assumed blank ignorance, but the man's eyes pleaded; it
seemed a tremendous matter to him. I tried to be non-committal, and
said: "Of course I haven't any right." But I had a vague, stupid sense
that loyalty to Churchill demanded that I should back up a man he was
backing. As a matter of fact, nothing so direct was a-gate, it couldn't
have been. It was something about shares in one of de Mersch's other
enterprises. Polehampton was going to pick them up for nothing, and they
were going to rise when the boom in de Mersch's began--something of the
sort. And the boom would begin as soon as the news of the agreement
about the railway got abroad.
I let him get it out of me in a way that makes the thought of that bare
place with its gilt book-backs and its three uncomfortable
office-chairs and the ground-glass windows through which one read the
inversion of the legend "Polehampton," all its gloom and its rigid lines
and its pallid light, a memory of confusion. And Polehampton was
properly grateful, and invited me to dine with him and his phantasmal
daughter--who wanted to make my acquaintance. It was like a command to a
state banquet given by a palace official, and Lea would be invited to
meet me. Miss Polehampton did not like Lea, but he had to be asked once
a year--to encourage good feeling, I suppose. The interview dribbled out
on those lines. I asked if it was one of Lea's days at the office. It
was not. I tried to put in a good word for Lea, but it was not very
effective. Polehampton was too subject to his assistant's thorns to be
responsive to praise of him.
So I hurried out of the place. I wanted to be out of this medium in
which my ineffectiveness threatened to proclaim itself to me. It was not
a very difficult matter. I had, in those days, rooms in one of the
political journalists' clubs--a vast mausoleum of white tiles. But a man
used to pack my portmanteau very efficiently and at short notice. At
the station one of those coincidences that are not coincidences made me
run against the great Callan. He was rather unhappy--found it impossible
to make an already distracted porter listen to the end of one of his
sentences with two-second waits between each word. For that reason he
brightened to see me--was delighted to find a through-journey companion
who would take him on terms of greatness. In the railway carriage,
divested of troublesome bags that imparted anxiety to his small face and
a stagger to his walk, he swelled to his normal dimensions.
"So you're--going to--Paris," he meditated, "for the _Hour_."
"I'm going to Paris for the _Hour_," I agreed.
"Ah!" he went on, "you're going to interview the Elective Grand
Duke...."
"We call him the Duc de Mersch," I interrupted, flippantly. It was a
matter of nuances. The Elective Grand Duke was a philanthropist and a
State Founder, the Duc de Mersch was the hero as financier.
"Of Holstein-Launewitz," Callan ignored. The titles slipped over his
tongue like the last drops of some inestimable oily vintage.
"I might have saved you the trouble. I'm going to see him myself."
"_You_," I italicised. It struck me as phenomenal and rather absurd that
everybody that I came across should, in some way or other, be mixed up
with this portentous philanthropist. It was as if a fisherman were
drawing in a ground line baited with hundreds of hooks. He had a little
offended air.
"He, or, I should say, a number of people interested in a philanthropic
society, have asked me to go to Greenland."
"Do they want to get rid of you?" I asked, flippantly. I was made to
know my place.
"My dear fellow," Callan said, in his most deliberate, most Olympian
tone. "I believe you're entirely mistaken, I believe ... I've been
informed that the Système Groënlandais is one of the healthiest places
in the Polar regions. There are interested persons who...."
"So I've heard," I interrupted, "but I can assure you I've heard nothing
but good of the Système and the ... and its philanthropists. I meant
nothing against them. I was only astonished that you should go to such a
place."
"I have been asked to go upon a mission," he explained, seriously, "to
ascertain what the truth about the Système really is. It is a new
country with, I am assured, a great future in store. A great deal of
English money has been invested in its securities, and naturally great
interest is taken in its affairs."
"So it seems," I said, "I seem to run upon it at every hour of the day
and night."
"Ah, yes," Callan rhapsodised, "it has a great future in store, a great
future. The Duke is a true philanthropist. He has taken infinite
pains--infinite pains. He wished to build up a model state, _the_ model
protectorate of the world, a place where perfect equality shall obtain
for all races, all creeds, and all colours. You would scarcely believe
how he has worked to ensure the happiness of the native races. He
founded the great society to protect the Esquimaux, the Society for the
Regeneration of the Arctic Regions--the S.R.A.R.--as you called it, and
now he is only waiting to accomplish his greatest project--the
Trans-Greenland railway. When that is done, he will hand over the
Système to his own people. That is the act of a great man."
"Ah, yes," I said.
"Well," Callan began again, but suddenly paused. "By-the-bye, this must
go no farther," he said, anxiously, "I will let you have full
particulars when the time is ripe."
"My dear Callan," I said, touchily, "I can hold my tongue."
He went off at tangent.
"I don't want you to take my word--I haven't seen it yet. But I feel
assured about it myself. The most distinguished people have spoken to me
in its favour. The celebrated traveller, Aston, spoke of it with tears
in his eyes. He was the first governor-general, you know. Of course I
should not take any interest in it, if I were not satisfied as to that.
It is percisely because I feel that the thing is one of the finest
monuments of a grand century that I am going to lend it the weight of my
pen."
"I quite understand," I assured him; then, solicitously, "I hope they
don't expect you to do it for nothing."
"Oh, dear, no," Callan answered.
"Ah, well, I wish you luck," I said. "They couldn't have got a better
man to win over the National conscience. I suppose it comes to that."
Callan nodded.
"I fancy I have the ear of the public," he said. He seemed to get
satisfaction from the thought.
The train entered Folkestone Harbour. The smell of the sea and the easy
send of the boat put a little heart into me, but my spirits were on the
down grade. Callan was a trying companion. The sight of him stirred
uneasy emotions, the sound of his voice jarred.
"Are you coming to the Grand?" he said, as we passed St. Denis.
"My God, no," I answered, hotly, "I'm going across the river."
"Ah," he murmured, "the Quartier Latin. I wish I could come with you.
But I've my reputation to think of. You'd be surprised how people get to
hear of my movements. Besides, I'm a family man."
I was agitatedly silent. The train steamed into the glare of the
electric lights, and, getting into a fiacre, I breathed again. I seemed
to be at the entrance of a new life, a better sort of paradise, during
that drive across the night city. In London one is always a passenger,
in Paris one has reached a goal. The crowds on the pavements, under the
plane-trees, in the black shadows, in the white glare of the open
spaces, are at leisure--they go nowhere, seek nothing beyond.
We crossed the river, the unwinking towers of Notre Dame towering
pallidly against the dark sky behind us; rattled into the new light of
the resuming boulevard; turned up a dark street, and came to a halt
before a half-familiar shut door. You know how one wakes the sleepy
concierge, how one takes one's candle, climbs up hundreds and hundreds
of smooth stairs, following the slipshod footfalls of a half-awakened
guide upward through Rembrandt's own shadows, and how one's final sleep
is sweetened by the little inconveniences of a strange bare room and of
a strange hard bed.