2
It was only when Felix had warmly parted from his new friend, and agreed to come over the next noon for lunch and a visit to Downer’s, that he realized—with some chagrin—that he had failed to say anything to Mr. Clive Bangs about getting a job as a reporter on the Evening Chronicle.
In fact, he had fallen very neatly into the trap prepared for him by his own fatal temperament. He had given himself away at the very start. And Bangs, who appeared to indulge some theoretical and visionary traits as a relaxation to the sober work of helping get out a great daily newspaper, had enjoyed his moon-calfishness: but to what end?
Going back to his room at Community House, Felix gravely and dispassionately considered the question of what impression he had made. “On the one hand,” he said to himself, “it is doubtless true that Mr. Bangs must enjoy coming across another person who shares his own literary tastes. But, on the other hand, these tastes are in the nature of an avocation for him, and my possession of them proves nothing whatever as to my fitness for a newspaper job. Suppose he had happened to be enthusiastic about Japanese prints; suppose he had just bought a Kiyonaga, and I had looked at it and praised it; he would have been pleased to find some one who knew the difference between a Kiyonaga and a Kunisada—but would he have thought that a reason for helping me to get a newspaper job? I’m afraid not.”
Felix was pleased with the coolness of his reasoning under circumstances where another person might have built up vain hopes. And in any event, Clive Bangs was a friend; and friendship had a value of its own. He would not embarrass Clive Bangs with any requests for help; he would take what their friendship had to give, and be glad of it.
Accordingly, it was without any ulterior motive that he went to lunch with Bangs next day. Again they talked literature and ideas; they explored Downer’s together, and Felix picked up a second volume to complete his Muses’ Library edition of the poems of John Donne: and they strolled back to the office of the Chronicle, where Felix became acquainted with the other editorial writers.
The long, lean man was a New Englander named Hosmer Flint; he corresponded very much to Felix’s idea of what the editorial writer of a great daily newspaper should be, for he had a mind incredibly stored with statistics of all kinds. The other was the chief editorial writer—a man of fifty, plump and dimpled, with a childlike charm of manner which made it natural for every one to call him “Willie”—his other name being Smith.
Willie Smith genially expressed to Felix the hope that there might be something for him on the Chronicle, and when the managing editor happened in he introduced Felix to him casually as a young man who was looking for a newspaper job; but Felix understood that this was simply Willie’s good nature, and refused to take the possibility seriously. He found his new acquaintances agreeable to talk to, however, and fell into the habit of dropping into the editorial office in the slack part of the afternoon, for a half-hour’s talk. Having no economic reason for pretending to be anything but himself in their presence, he talked about the things that really interested him—socialism and anarchism and life and art.
He permitted himself these idle pleasures only after hours dutifully spent in annoying the editors of five or six other papers with a brisk and efficient presentation of his usefulness. He had to appear so preternaturally capable and alert on these occasions that it was a relief to be able to throw off the disguise and loaf and invite his soul in the editorial room of the Evening Chronicle. It was, as he sometimes reproachfully told himself, a concession to his inborn weakness, and just so much time lost from his task of getting a newspaper job.