CHAPTER XI—UNDER WAY
AS a simple matter of course, Lance offered Sam the first refusal of his father’s business, but was not surprised when Sam declined to think of it.
Sam was far more surprised at himself than Lance at Sam. Lance had never looked upon estate agency as a desirable profession, whereas Sam had been bored with its routine without losing his respect for its utility, and only yesterday he would have jumped at the chance of owning the business. He heard with astonishment the sound of his own voice politely refusing the offer, but having refused he did not tamper with his swift decision.
The fact is, one supposes, that what might be called the quick-firing part of his intelligence had absorbed and reacted to the fact of his thousand pounds before the whole of him was properly aware of it. At any rate, he refused, and, on reflection, approved his refusal.
His speculation in Gerald Adams wore a different aspect now that he was a capitalist. “Money,” as he had remembered once before, “breeds money,” and he doubted if Travers’ business, robbed of Travers’ genial personality, were fecund enough for the pace of money-breeding he anticipated. Perhaps, too, there was something in the thought that the Travers’ agency was dead man’s shoes, while, win or lose, the idea of publishing Adams’ lecture was his own invention.
Another thing that happened to him with his legacy was the feeling that he had regained caste; he belonged again with his old school-fellows. “How many of them,” he thought, “can lay hands at a moment’s notice on a thousand pounds?” and walked erectly through the street where, naturally, since he had not met him in eight years until last night, he encountered Stewart.
“Hullo,” said Stewart, “how’s the patron of letters? And would a drink be any use to you?”
Sam hesitated. Did the way to the society of the Olympians lie through the doors of the public-house? Stewart was undeniably Olympian: he had the air, the manner, the clothes of well-assured success. He had a lightness and a poise that excited Sam’s envy. He had style, this youth who might be anything, but who, Sam cynically thought, had probably not paid for his distinguished clothes, while Sam was the owner of a thousand pounds. He was, thereby, Olympian in quiet fact, which need not be shrieked from the house-tops, as Stewart had, apparently, to shriek. Sam was, and there was the possibility that Stewart only appeared to be. It gave him strength to refuse. Not from principle, but from economical prejudice Sam was a teetotaller.
“I don’t take alcohol,” he said.
“It’s never too late to mend,” said Stewart. “Still, there’s a café here, and we’ll drink coffee. It’s bad for our hearts, but Balzac wrote the ‘Comédie Humaine’ on black coffee, so there may be something in the vice, though it isn’t a habit of mine. Two black coffees, Sophie,” he ordered from the waitress.
“If it isn’t a habit of yours,” asked Sam, “how do you come to know the waitress by name?”
“‘My dear ass!” said Stewart pityingly.
“Do you call them all Sophie?”
“Only when it’s their name. Your name is Sophie, isn’t it?” he said as the girl returned with their coffee.
“Yes, sir.”
Stewart appreciated Sam’s astonishment. “I know I’m showing off, but I like it. If you see a girl with an idiotic silver brooch made up of the letters SOPHIE you can assume that it’s her name, and not the name of her best boy. Simple, when you know how it’s done, like all first-rate conjuring.”
“I hadn’t noticed her brooch,” said Sam.
“I had. That’s the difference. Still, it isn’t fair to blame you. I’m a professional observer.” Sam took Stewart to mean that he was a detective, but hadn’t time to ask for confirmation, because Stewart asked instead: “And what, by the way, are you?” And threw him into some embarrassment by the question. What, indeed, at the moment was he?
“Doesn’t your observation tell you?” he fenced.
“It told me last night that you’re a considerable lunatic. Did you buy that stuff of Adams’?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Thought I saw you in the act as I went out. Obviously, then, you’re a tripe merchant.”
“I wonder,” said Sam, “whether you could help me, Stewart. Seriously, I mean.”
“In the tripe trade?”
“I want very much to meet a journalist.” He thought a detective ought to know journalists.
“But, my dear fellow, this is a café. It isn’t a bar. What do you want a journalist for?”
“I will tell that to the journalist.”
“If you want to start a paper and you’re looking for an editor, you needn’t look further than me. There have been candid moments in my life when I have called myself a journalist. At present, I edit the Manchester Warden, but I’m open to conviction.” He didn’t quite edit that paper—yet, but reported for it at six pounds a week. He did not know shorthand, but he quoted Joseph Conrad and Henry James, correctly and incongruously, when he wrote a notice of a music-hall performance.
“I’m afraid,” said Sam astutely, “that when I said a journalist, I meant something very different from you, but I will tell you how I stand and perhaps you will advise me. Last night, as you know, I bought Adams’ paper. I gave him twenty-five pounds for it.”
“Lunacy,” said Stewart, “is a mild word for your complaint. Twenty-five shillings would be a top price for it in a friendly market.”
“To-day I reached the office to learn that my employer had died suddenly. You remember Lance Travers? It was his father, and with his death, for all practical purposes the business comes to an end. Well, you see my position.”
Stewart quoted Sheridan: “‘The Spanish Fleet thou canst not see, because it is not yet in sight.’ And much the same applies to your position, my lad. Its postal address is the Womb of Time.”
“That is true,” said Sam. “And I may add that I am engaged to be married.”
“I can admire thoroughness,” said Stewart. “You omit none of the essentials.”
“Now, with it all,” said Sam, “I’m still too proud to go to Adams and ask him to let me off my bargain.”
“And it wouldn’t be any use if you did,” said Stewart. “He’d laugh at you.”
“I can believe it of him. But I’m landed with his paper. It has cost me twenty-live pounds. I meant to print it, and I mean to print it, but I mean now to sell it when it is printed.” Sam left Stewart to suppose that, had Travers not died, he would have distributed that pamphlet free. “Money,” he added, “is a necessity.”
He had taken the right line. Stewart’s instinctive generosity was touched, and he meant to give this lame dog a lift over the stile. “I see where your journalist comes in. All right, Branstone, you can count on me.”
“On you?” said Sam. “Oh, I couldn’t ask it of you.”
“You didn’t ask,” replied Stewart naively. “I offer. I may edit the Manchester Warden, but Zeus nods sometimes, ’busmen have been known to take a holiday, and there is a paper called the Sunday Judge in whose chaste columns I have written under the name of Percy Persiflage. Send me a proof of that pamphlet and Percy shall stamp upon it. He will say that no decent person could read it without being revolted, and the pamphlet will boom. It’s the Sunday-paper public that you want, and... No, Percy shall not stamp. Percy shall bless. He will be moved to admiration of Mr. Adams’ earnestness, he will applaud the high moral purpose, and will do the rest by correspondence. Get your sisters and your cousins and your aunts to pitch in letters on either side, and I’ll see they get printed. I make this alteration because of the bookstalls.”
“The bookstalls?” asked Sam vaguely.
“This problem of distribution,” said Stewart impressively, “is the most difficult question of modern life. The producer is here, you; the consumer (we hope) is everywhere, and the problem is to bring your pamphlet to the thirsting consumer. The answer is the bookstall, but the bookstalls are cautious. When I say bookstalls I mean the right bookstalls. You will never see your money back if the only bookstalls which will exhibit your pamphlet are those which sell atrociously printed paperbacked editions of ‘Nana’ and ‘Fanny Hill.’ You must flourish on the bookstalls, and they banned ‘Esther Waters.’ The bookstalls, Branstone, are going to call for tact, and tact shall begin with Percy’s appreciation.”
“Or earlier,” said Sam.
“Earlier?”
“I hadn’t thought of the bookstalls, but this may help there, as well as in other ways. I mean, as far as Manchester is concerned, and if we get it on the stalls here, they can’t very well refuse it in other places.”
“Manchester being Manchester, it isn’t likely,” said Stewart. “What’s your idea?”
“Only this,” said Sam, and showed him his proposed cover for the pamphlet.